Sleep and Weep
by notbazluhrmann
Summary: After watching the show, Quinn awakes in the reality of Bungou Stray Dogs with a catch: her body is not her own and is an enemy to the Port Mafia. They promise her safety in return for helping right her past lives wrongs, meanwhile Quinn learns just what it means to be part of the mafia, at war with the Detective Agency, and just how much ability users are not right in the head.
1. Quinn Lucid Dreams!

_"_ _Kunikida is Dad and Dazai is Daddy."_

She spat milk.  
They were words the brunette wrote herself, typed by half asleep thumbs during another midnight binge, but seeing it in the light of day gave her a different interpretation—especially with the two thousand comments, likes, and reposts filling up her notifications. Even early morning text messages from mom were hidden by arrays of tongue and eggplant emojis, and exclamation marks both upside down and right-side up. At the sight, she continues to cough liquid out of her lungs and onto the sidewalk, drawing judgmental eyes of those around her. This was not how she expected the morning to go, but at least this made for something interesting.

Stepping up her pace, Quinn shoves the phone into her jacket pocket. These are not the things she needs to be reliving in the morning, mothers texts aside. She has a job to get to, after all, one that requires undivided attention crossing the street and into glass doors. The job also gives her an opportunity to forget about the rise in attention of what she has to say, save for the rumbles of her pocketed phone every time she receives another notification and the 'excuse me' she mutters to crowds around the second pair of front doors to her place of work.

The job did not give her the opportunity to forget what it was she said as the first thing she heard before sitting down at her designated rolling chair is "Are you Osamu Dazai? Cause I think you're my father."

"That's not funny—!" in a sharp whisper, she lightly pushes down her hands as to gesture for her co-worker to quiet themselves, or silence in entirely. Instead of doing so, however, the opposite girl squeals, smiling as she begins to spin in her chair. Her personality, of course, as fired up as the red hair she insists to be natural. Quinn continues her attempts to silence her, a bit overwhelmed by the noise she spurts in rotations and the repeated buzzing in her pocket. It was a first, but only because the two were seated at the entrance of a library having nearby patrons shush them instead of it being the other way around.

"I can't believe you watched it all in one night! Don't you have any self-control!" steadying herself and her voice, the co-worker Rita still kept a grin on her face making Quinn nearly squirm as she removed her coat to sling it over the back of her chair. No answer came in the next few seconds, her focus instead on setting up her computer and counting the eyes that still peered their way. Rita never cared for crossing professional lines during their day-job, but Quinn was a stickler for lasting impressions.

"And you live-tweeted the whole time, it was incredible! You loon, how could you not expect people to love it!"  
"SH!"

Quinn pushes her finger into her coworkers face with the sound, one meant to elicit silence but instead causing a giggle.

This moment outburst really traced back to months ago when Quinn first started working at her campus library during the height of her freshman year, only getting the job because she was somehow the only one in the applicant pool with actual experience thanks to a week of high school volunteering and a falsely exaggerated summer job. She was trained by her current co-worker, Rita, a rising junior who was still undeclared and willing to spark conversation about anything other than the Library of Congress system. That led to the common conversation on movies while shelving, expanding into actors and silver screen roles, and soon voice acting and the dynamics of the sub versus dub argument to popular anime's. Once they reached the center to their black hole Rita began a 'must watch' list, at the top with many hearts lying a 2012 phenomenon "Bungou Stray Dogs". That night Quinn watched the pilot with excitement, but she did so to all the other twelve shows on the list given to her, and while she picked up some with a fervor they never lasted her longer than a weekend or left her wanting more. They were more or less concluded, and she was okay with that.

Until the night before now when she saw episode two of Rita's beloved _Stray Dogs_ , and the next giving her the chance to fall in love with a sea of characters with only more added to the list at every passing twenty minutes. Before she knew it, it was three am and Twitter was still open on another tab, fingers flying as the next generation Soukoku landed a perfect double punch to an American tycoon. It was graceful, and she needed more,

"I get that people love it but I can't even get to two dot's without another notification popping up…" Quinn grumbles her words as she fishes back for her phone to show her excited friend what she woke up to.

"Well, thank god you used a pen name for that account, otherwise you would never be hired again." Rita's joking words earned a stifled laugh from the brunette beside her, and soon she took the phone right out of her hands to scroll through the madness. Some of which included a sea of "same" and "fuck u right", others instead instigators that suggested the Port Mafia held more "Daddy" characters than the Armed Detective Agency ever could. It was a mess, and she found it hilarious.

On the other side of the desk, Quinn groans, dropping her head onto the keyboard in front of her and ignoring the series of error messages that pop up. Right now, her life was an error; all productivity she meant to achieve last night down the drain and only having poor commentary to show for it. But this was the youth in her, after all, shouldn't she go with the flow?

The flow eventually died out from this ecstatic conversation with her coworker, leading her to explain that "non-circulating" books are not meant to leave the library on multiple occasions and live with the horrors of reshelving in-house books on her lonesome as Rita went to 'use the bathroom' for an hour and a half. This was her life though, momentary ups and splurges of embarrassing moments sandwiched between absolutely nothing; eventually, the tweet was forgotten, the flurry of commenters gone allowing Quinn to text back her mom and play a couple rounds of two-dots, and her mind instead fixated on school. Though she would find herself daydreaming about the incredible world building and regional groups created by the show, the thoughts wouldn't last too long before she had to be concerned with crossing the street without being hit by a bicycle or making a weeks worth of dinner and not burning the dorm room down.

Only when she was finally in bed for the night could she remember the start of the day, the flustered emotions back as she covers her face in her arms despite her roommate not even there with her. _You're so stupid…_ Quinn chants to herself, but soon her mind drifts off to the comments, the ones beyond eggplant emojis and "fuck u right"s, instead considering the instigators and laughing at her new amended version as she slowly drifts into sleep.

 _"_ _Mori is Dad and Chuuya is Daddy."_

* * *

The room smelled of seawater all of a sudden, but somehow mixed with rotten eggs and fermented piss. It was disturbing, considering Quinn lived on the ocean for part of her life, and she never experienced a smell other than the crispness of salt and the freshness of water combined in a beautiful sensation that even the chronic beach-peers couldn't ruin. She had no prototype for this new smell then, other than the Hudson River, maybe, but with her eyes closed she turns over in her bed expecting the opposite side to smell better.

Turning, she realizes, was impossible; her body somehow no longer in a laid position but standing, and weirdly hovering. She opens her eyes but they burn and still see nothing but black. Worried, she closes them and gasps but the air she expected to fill her lungs is instead water.

 _Water_.

Quinn is abruptly met with the idea that she is drowning, and though she struggles against the water that suddenly engulfs her with a closed mouth she realizes she's sinking. Though it hurts, she opens her eyes again and is still met with black, but it almost looks fabricated, like a bag.

 _A body bag._

She wants to scream but her lungs are already throttling from the choked water. It's worse than the morning's milk, deadlier even, and she can imagine her body convulsing in the water until finally it gives in and she dies. Currently, she couldn't give a shit about context, like why or how she was suddenly bagged and weighted to fall into water in the first place. Her burning eyes instead look for anything that could help her out, and when they find light at a small hole in the side of the bag, her flailing hands grasp the fabric and begin to tear. Relief floods her body, but so does more water, and in a fight or flight response her arms begin to reach above her head to pull her body up; the weight, thankfully, attached to the bag and not her body, and somehow she was comforted by the idea that whoever attempted to kill her was an amateur.

As her legs kicked and her arms pulled, Quinn couldn't help but give a silent prayer to whatever God insisted to her mother that she take swimming lessons, eventually reaching the surface and letting out a hollow gasp for air. The water she swallowed now coming back up in a heaving cough, her body nearly doubling over and back into the water, but her treading legs kept her steady enough to stay above.

Now her mind began to race in thought, her body tired and limp despite moving at its best rate. Wasn't she just asleep? She sure felt exhausted from the swim alone, but the way her mind clouded almost reminded her of a REM cycle. The sudden possibility of this being a lucid dream (or rather, nightmare) better in her mind than thinking she forgot her entire abduction.

As a heat hits her back her thoughts were thrown off again as she realized it was as bright as day outside, the sun boiling the air but the water chilling to her bones. To the left of the celestial mark lied a bridge, she observed with half-lidded eyes, and to the right a city. _What is this, the Brooklyn Bridge? George Washington?_ Quinn began to list all the nearby fixtures she could think of until she realized none of the structures matched, nothing looked familiar, even the body of water she barely floated in was foreign to her in color and in depth. _This was not good…_ Her eyes caught the city landscape again, skylines that didn't match anything Manhattan had to offer mixed with an active port. _San Francisco?_ Maybe that explained the change in light out, and the grey structure leading to the city looked like the Oakland Bay Bridge. The shift in location wasn't comforting, but as she kicked her legs up and her arms forward she began to head towards the city buildings.

 _If this is a dream,_ she thought with jagged breaths, _I sure am getting creative._

* * *

The tide was up, proven by the rough knocks of the port's water against rock. To be out in the morning was nearly a sin, but the situation was all too perfect—too convenient. Traitors were a once in a month chance to apprehend, sure, but it was their dialect that proved interesting; their insistence of fidelity with quick heartbeats and shallow breaths was amusing to the young man now throwing stones through a gloved hand. He expected nothing to be unusual when he first returned this morning, nothing pressing his immediate presence, but a group of individuals who somehow swindled the Port Mafia of nearly thirty percent their monthly income earned his attention.

He watched as the three responsible were forced to bite the pavement before the sun could rise, but as the mafiosi brought with him took out their guns he was attracted to the roars of the ports; the sounds nearly covered up the nine fired shots, maybe because he was focused on the rising dark lines against rock rather than the scene behind him. Any sort of guidance unnecessary as this group was often tasked with retaliation efforts, but when a roughhousing that wasn't the current filled his ears he was forced to turn away and smack a suit upside the head.

"Cover her back up." Chuuya's voice was brittle with the command, eyes on the mafioso dead on as his pale hands shakily fixed the slip of a female body clearly pulled for his own content, a small "Yes sir" muttered with the motion. His two snickering pals were silenced, their eyes focused on the knots around the legs that tied the bag closed and the weights tight. Though they were his people, Chuuya couldn't help but think of them as disgusting if that's how they normally treated the bodies they would be assigned to make disappear; murder and necrophilia, while each an extreme itself, of entirely different extremes.

A glove reaches for another stone in the ground, thumb testing its smoothness as though he could really feel the polished rock. _It's about shape anyway,_ Kouyou pointed out to him the first time they sat near enough to the water that he began to pick up the rocks, and without any prior knowledge nor any ability-influenced skill, he roughly tossed them against the waves to see how far they could go before they sink. Now he could do all kinds of tricks with a flat rock, yet he still chose to let the one currently in his hand plop into the oncoming current, no tricks, no skips, head down curious to see how fast it could sink with the fighting waves.

"Sir!" a voice landed before the stone, earning a small hum from the ginger as he looked up. Instead of turning, however, he gazed beyond the water where, amongst the waves, a body was coming towards the shore. It wasn't pushed by the waves nor still in a floating position, but an actual avid swimmer pushing to the port. Behind him, the sounds of readied weaponry played against this swimmers strides, but Chuuya held up a hand to stop them and they were soon lowered.

A minute past and the body came into view—and was definitely not a real swimmer. As it made one final push onto land, he noticed its femininity, though above all its familiarity. She doubled over onto the sandy stone of the port, coughing up seawater, and in this obliviousness, he took the chance to step closer, look closer, pointing out every little thing he could have sworn he saw on a dead body seconds ago. "Jesus, fuck," she says with jagged breaths before turning on her back against the stone, her slip that was only stained by blood now soaked with brown around the edges, and though there were still holes where she had been shot, the skin behind them was smooth, healed.

Her eyes remain closed as he takes his final steps closer, now standing above the body by her head, looking down on the suddenly alive cadaver. He blinks, unsure what to think or where to go, so he nudges her shoulder with his foot. More superlatives come out of her mouth as he does so, but when she opens her eyes they widen within seconds; what she says next does, indeed, elicit a cruel smile from the ends of his mouth.

 _"_ _This is definitely not San Francisco."_

* * *

A bagged head, the cut of tweed, a car door slam, and a series of orders that were too far to make out. Quinn relied on sounds like these now to put the pieces of her shattered mind together, but still, she remained at a loss. The bagged head was her own, and she was thankful it was cotton, but the air was still stuffy in the old car she was shoved in. Though her hands were tied around her back with the rough tweed she could still feel the leather of the seats beneath her and the holes that wore into them over use. She mentally gives herself an applause for such incredible detail her mind created for a mere dream. If _Inception_ ever became a reality, she could go far as a minds architect, from the bumps she felt in the road to the fact that _she could not remember how the hell she got there_.

Stranded in the water seemed frighteningly real, but when she came ashore to face what she swore was a Nakahara Chuuya look-alike she considered the world to be less of a reality. It wasn't anything like the grey scaled photograph from the true authors Wikipedia page either, but the astounding colors of blue and orange that gave the fictional character a two-dimensional life. Her brain was clearly going through an obsession, she decided, conjuring the executive even as she sleeps. Perhaps that was why she was breathing evenly in the car even though she was shivering from the water; the idea that this was all fake, like bad, undrafted fanfiction, keeping Quinn from throwing up whatever seawater was left to mingle with her stomachs bile.

Or so she thought.

The minute the car stopped and the bag was taken off from her head she doubled over again, feeling her bodily acids singe at the inside of her mouth before vomiting right onto a pair of shined black shoes. "I am so sorry," she muttered before gagging and feeling a second round come up, but instead of liquid she nearly choked on what she thought was a regurgitated bone. The thing that came out of her instead shining next to the shoes she just defiled. She narrows her eyes and refrains from picking the item up as her hands are still behind her back, but from where she stood it looked like a piece of jewelry, just a bit odd in shape. The body housing the shoes she threw up on groaned and kicked the liquid pile along with the odd jewelry away, soon lifting his knee to what should have been her chin if a hand on her shoulder didn't pull her bent frame to stand.

A gloved hand.

"Knock it off and clean this mess up." Chuuya spoke, and though his hand on her was loose and non-threatening she couldn't help but tense up at the neck. "Hand me your jacket." he added, and she watched as the black-suited mafioso with the now un-shined shoes frowned as he unbuttoned his outerwear and held it out to the executive with a clenched fist. With his other hand, Chuuya grabbed the jacket, but soon his light touch left her shoulder to drape the black fabric over her exposed skin. She wanted to look back, maybe to say thank you, but the circumstance told her it was a bad idea.

The other two mafia members were now out of the car and in front of her, their even steps soon followed by her own as she was nudged to follow by the man behind her. Quinn decides against looking around as she walked, instead watching the feet in front of her to be sure she never gets too close. They were near a building, sure, but it wasn't as though she would remember exactly where and with what features for later. It wasn't as though it mattered, she reminded herself with each step, even as they entered a building with no walls and began a descent into the dark down an extreme flight of stairs.

The further below ground they are the more Quinn feels herself shiver. Her hands twitch against the twine that surrounds them in another attempt to move and tighten the coat draped over her shoulders. She refrains from asking "are we there yet?" and continues to remain evenly paced behind the men in front of her. After a while of walking in the same direction, she assumes where they're headed—she's about to be hung from her arms against a brick wall that has been rebuilt countless times due to torture and interrogation. There's no doubt, it was featured in both seasons after all, and her brain is too stupid to think of anything original.

When the walls suddenly become a clean chrome, she nearly trips at the reflection of light off of the surfaces. Quinn coughs to cover up the stumble and her expression of "what the hell is this?". Apparently, her mind _isn't_ too stupid to think of anything original as the stairs stop and the floor becomes flat. In the center of the room where she, for some reason, still expects a brick pillar stands a chrome box not unlike the rest of the room. Quinn stands still to observe this even as the mafioso's feet in front of her continue on and open the door. The shivering gets worse and her throat feels dry as she thinks about how much easier it is to clean blood off of chrome than brick. She takes a step back as if she could run but instead she hits a body—Chuuya's body.

"You afraid, Masamoto?"  
"I— _what?_ "

The name threw her in for a loop but it wasn't one strong enough to remain as Chuuya nudges her forward into the open door of the glimmering box. Instead of keeping her head down Quinn stares ahead with every step, and when her and his footsteps finally echo from entering the room there's a loud creak behind them followed by a large slam. The door is closed, and she is still cold.

Quinn's eyes bounce around every corner of the room taking in its predictability. Matching chrome table and chair set at the center? _Check_. A wall that's actually a mirror hiding two-way glass on the other side? _Check_. A water cooler in the corner with little paper cones? Odd, but sure, _check_.

As she notes the few distinguishing features of the room she soon observes Chuuya sitting on one side of the table with his knife in one hand and the twine that was around her wrist in the other. The sight makes her immediately bring them up to the front of her body and what she sees is not something as ordinary as one would expect hands to be.

They're calloused, not a single corner smooth even on the underside of the palm and it's not just because of the twine. Even the crevices between each finger have their own scars that stand out as a bright pink against her pale flesh. The flesh color, surprisingly, doesn't concern her as much as the torture evident on every corner of its skin. For some reason, she thinks about how if that were her own body she wouldn't have been able to take any of it, and at the thought, she puts her hands back down and then threads her arms through the sleeves of the jacket. Now covered, she shivers less because of the cold and more because of a creeping uncertainty. She looks back up at Chuuya who now wears a scowl.

"What the hell was that?" his voice bit as much as his teeth did to each other, and like a tardy student Quinn shamefully sits down in the chair opposite him.

It's quiet then, like he waits for her to explain herself. She opens her mouth like she could actually try and attempt to explain anything but instead closes it. With a frown she leans further back in her chair now; there's nothing she can say to make the situation better which only meant it was bound to get worse, and clearly she was brought there because she, for some Freudian reason, thought that she deserved to be encased in a shiny metallic room by a semi-fictional Japanese ginger.

The semi-fictional ginger, too, sat back in his chair with a frown. The room, though shiny and cold, began to feel suffocatingly warm as the only sound was their breathing and whatever static was transmitting that sound to the other side of the glass. Whoever was observing would have witnessed something like an uneventful cop drama Quinn would have never bothered to watch had she not been abruptly cast as the main character. _Whoever was observing…_

"Is this about the 'dad' and 'daddy' thing?" she suddenly blurts, pointing one finger at Chuuya and one at the tinted glass behind him. His already irritated scowl only worsened at her words, expanding with a hiss and yet he said nothing—so she continued. "Look, it's not that I don't think Mori is 'daddy' material or that you are exclusivly, I'm sure he really had it going for him in his military years, but I definitely don't need a subconscious journey to convince me of that."

At the bosses name the scowl falls and his eyes widen, though only for a second before he regains all composure and instead wears a delicate smirk.

"You know a lot for a low-level security girl."  
Quinn blinks. "It's just the circulation desk." she clarifies, but Chuuya snorts like it's a joke. She sits unsure that she knows the punchline.

"Right, circulation, you'd know all about that wouldn't you."  
He seemed to not understand what she was trying to say, but she was just as lost as she assumed he was. "Customer service rep?" she tilts her head like that was a better choice of words to explain, forgetting her earlier rule that explaining would only get her in the mud as exhibited by the echoing sound of a gloved fist knocking against metal.

"Just give the jig up and tell me where the money is or I'll make sure someone gets it out of you in the most painful way possible, Masamoto."

Now she was completely lost. _Masamoto?_ "Machada you mean—wait, no, I don't know about any money or any Masamoto." saying it reminded her of when he said it before, taunting her by the entrance to the cube they currently sat in. "There's been some kind of mistake, I'm not—,"

As the words dangle off of her lips, Quinn suddenly realizes what exactly she's looking at as she faces the chrome table beneath her. Though the image is a bit blurry and oddly proportioned she could see that the face that was speaking, that she was so sure to claim with her own name, was in fact not hers. From the smaller shape of her face to her wider and brighter eyes, Quinn was suddenly smacked in the face with the idea that she really was _not_ herself. Though the iris was still a soft green like her own she looked at and picked on so many times there was nothing else familiar about the face she saw. A long nose and thin pink lips that matched her hair was unlike the stout nostrils she often made pig noises for and the thick lips that looked as unnatural as a mii's. _Matched her hair… Matched her hair!_ Oh how her dad was going to kill her to see the sudden pink of her hair, fading or not. But it wasn't her hair, she had to remind herself, because the only time she had hair like that was in dreams where she was being whisked away by astronaut Mike Dexter.

 _In dreams…_

"I'm not me…" she whispers, still looking at the wonky reflection, missing whatever irritated faces Chuuya may have made across from her. _Chuuya_ , _that's right_ , he doesn't actually exist and neither does her little skinny face, there's no real way any of this captivity could be real no matter how much the seawater stung her lungs or how she could feel the vomit burn her throat when coming up. It was all a dream, a crazy fan-induced dream, and now was a good a time as ever to wake up.

W _hat did they do in Inception again?_ She wasn't sure. S _he wasn't sure? Now of all times she chooses to not remember key events to a Christopher Nolan movie?!_ Quinn grits her teeth together as she stares down at the chrome table beneath her and the reflection that's not hers. _Maybe a good blow to the head would do it_ , she considers as she breathes in, once, twice, and on the third breath she recoils her head up before smacking it against the cold metal in one harsh swoop. Quinn cries out in pain, Chuuya cries out in curses.

"What the hell Masamoto!"  
"This is a dream, this is a dream, this is a dream," though she hears him get up she repeats the statement like a mantra, a point of focus as her vision begins to blur. There may have been a crack on the harsh contact but she tried not to focus if that caused significant pain or where it may have come from. Another breath in, once, twice, and again on the third she slams her head against the cold metal. "this is a dream, this is a dream, this is a dream," She groans the words into the surface as nothing happens again, except for the sudden red that begins to collect into its own pond streaming from her face to the table, and the sudden numbness in her face from what she assumes to be bruises. She raises her head again and plans to drop it one last time—.

But she can't move.

In fact, she can't even breathe, or maybe the air is just too thick to make its way through her lungs. Everything just feels heavy, and looking at the empty chair across from her reminds her why: gravity.

With a gloved hand around the back of her throat, Quinn sits, motionless, weighted down to the chair. Though she's stuck her eyes still dart themselves through the room, from the empty chair to the off red glow that reflects from the table—or maybe that's just her blood.

"I knew you were unhinged but this seems excessive." Chuuya tsks, and Quinn wonders just how much force it will take to throw one last blow now that she couldn't even breathe.

 _Inception, Inception, think Inception…_ Though she couldn't move to speak her thoughts raced like the Zach Galifianakis gif whose context she still didn't know, but that was not the movie she was concerned with. _Dreams, dreams, when you die you wake up_ , that's what she was going for, like a kick, or a French song, or other details she couldn't place. It's a dream, it's a dream, but if it's a dream why does her body throb for any excess oxygen without moving at all?

Her vision blurs, the weight is gone, and in a third swoop, her head collapses against the cold table.

* * *

It's a hollow noise sounded by the back of her throat as she finally breathes in, sits upright in her bed, and grabs at her neck. Her nails dig marks into her skin, but she needs to make sure each inhale will be followed by an exhale, and every time her neck shrinks she wants it to expand before the second passes.

 _Her bed?  
_ _Her bed!_

Looking around the room that is her overpriced Manhattan dorm Quinn's breath slows. The outside sounds of a sedan honking at an occupied ambulance amidst street curses only aiding her relaxation. She is in her bed instead of an interrogation room, she is in New York instead of Yokohama. Even when she peaks beneath the sheets she is met with the same nightshirt she's worn all this week, a torn 2001 Gap commodity, instead of the slip and blazer of horrendous stains.

Most importantly her hands are her own; no scarred tissue even in the crevices, no pale skin that could be easily bruised. She turns them over to be sure there were no secrets on the other side but no, it was just her tan hand, a birthmark here and there, and sweaty. With a sigh of relief, Quinn brings her arms around herself in an embrace. How she missed her disgusting sweaty body.

The door opens.  
"Hey, do you have any q-tips—?"  
"BELLA!"

Quinn nearly pounces her roommate once the door opens, the shorter girl yelling superlatives with wobbled steps back.

"Bella, this is important,"  
"Yeah, I'm sure, look what about the q-tips?"  
"Have I been in the dorm the entire night?"

The other girl's face goes monotone for a second, like a robot in reboot mode, before one eyebrow goes up with a scoff. "Dude you went to bed at seven like you always do, you didn't even move when your alarm went off grandma.  
"Alarm?"  
"Yeah, it's like ten AM I figured you just weren't going to class—,"

And here comes all of Quinn's stresses again, her mouth muttering curses to herself as she pushes past her roommate and into the bathroom—brushing her teeth, putting on deodorant, and then back into the room where she pulls on a pair of pants from her hamper. What a dream that was, really, but it wouldn't compare to the nightmare before her being late to her classes.

* * *

 _"_ _This is a dream, this is a dream, this is a dream—!"_ the words stop, there's a pop, and a shrill squeak fills the room before her voice returns. _"This is a dream, this is a dream, this is a dream—!"_ he stops it again, rewinds the tape, and plays it a third time. Her voice begins again, and again, and again until finally, he pauses the tape. His voice thrums against his throat as his lips form a smile, his fingers intertwine in his laps.

"When she blacked out her heart rate fell real quick. We would have called her dead again if the doc didn't catch it. They're trying to see if she's comatose now."  
"Oh dear… And she really called me by my name?" Chuuya scoffs, Mori smirks.

"It's not impossible she overheard it, she was in shipping security for a long time—,"  
"She called you daddy, you know that, right?"  
"THAT'S—," Chuuya points a gloved finger at the man seated in front of him, jaw tight, but the moment rolls over as he exhales and fixes his hand to his side. The bosses smile never leaves, clearly amused with his executive. "That's not unusual for her, people who work with Masamoto say she roughhoused a lot."

"Oh Chuuya, have you been paying any attention?" Mori turns back to the images on the screen and points his pinky towards the girl in the corner of the frame. Around it are other angles of the same image: her face, scared, confused, frightened, staring at the table like it was more threatening than the one seated before her. She has no bravado, no sign of composure even the lowest mafia members have. "this girl isn't Masamoto…" Chuuya gapes and attempts to speak, to question his judgment, but when Mori closes his eyes and the younger closes his mouth. The value of her life to them immediately decided with one string of words:

"Whoever she is, she will be a lot more useful than her predecessor."

* * *

 _"_ _Head up, Quinn!"  
_ _"_ _Ms. Machada, no sleeping in class."  
_ _"_ _Can someone wake up the brunette in the back whose sleeping on top of her closed textbook—who, Quinn? Wake up, Quinn!"_

"It's embarrassing." reciting all the ways her professors have called her out in the past day, Quinn lies her head on her work desk with half-lidded eyes waiting to close for good. Next to her, Rita is hard at work on her computer opening tab on tab on dream theories. She really snowballed after Quinn told her of her crazy anime themed dream, likely due to the one psych class she took the year before and falling into a psychoanalyst mindset—the first thing to question: penis envy. Quinn really mulled that one over before answering, no, she does not regret having a vagina.

"Well, when you fall asleep in class do you at least dream of your daddy?"  
The brunette gurgles in response and now allows her eyes to close. "No, I actually see nothing." it was true; her head was already wonky throughout the day like she wasn't all there, but she attributed that to the lack of rest that was sucked away by the stress of her dream. The white void she saw every time she closed her eyes and shut off her brain for a few moments, that she wasn't sure how to identify. Maybe she convinced herself she had a concussion.

"So how did you wake up? Was it sudden? Did everything end? Or was it like how you forgot how the dream began?" Rita's taking notes now, only missing a pair of glasses to nudge up against her nose like a professional question-asker.

"Cognitive recalibration." Quinn mumbles, and for a second her nose stings like she really broke the bone. _Yikes_. Rita signs, unenthused.

"You're not helping."  
"Helping…?"

Quinn slurs her words from exhaustion but can distinctly hear Rita's fingers fly on her keyboard, clicks from her mouse only come in-between like she's checking words for spelling or opening links. The noise, though keeping her from falling asleep, is appreciated. The sound almost acts as an anchor keeping her in the moment and away from the white void that seems to call her beyond the darkness of closed eyelids. Quinn opens her eyes; the thought of darkness scared her.

Now moving closer to peer at the light from Rita's computer screens she reads through the tabs. "Lucid dream?" that's what she originally thought when the water bit at her skin and the sun seemed to burn that sensation away, but then she saw the peculiar gingers face and it was just a dream-dream to her— _that's how they work, right?_ _Fuck_ , she really should have paid more attention in that high school psychology class.

"Well you seem to vividly remember everything, and don't get me wrong but you usually can't remember shit."  
"Hey!" Quinn raises her head from the desk as though she's suddenly alert. Rita snickers.  
"What's our supervisors' name?"  
Quinn's head falls back down. "… Fair."

"As I was saying—you remembered it better than an actual memory and even put Chuuya in the plot because of your lonely hearts desires. More importantly, you knew it was a dream as you were dreaming."  
"Well, I wasn't _sure_ I was dreaming…"  
"You woke up didn't you?"  
"I—…" Quinn frowns. She still feels sleepy, asleep even, but maybe that's just what it means to be a college student.

"So it's a lucy dream or whatever—,"  
"Lucid."  
"Shouldn't I have been able to wake up as soon as I realized that? Or feel any kind of conscious connection with my body?"  
"Okay, I'm reading the Wikipedia page, I am not an expert of out of body experiences." Quinn makes a fart noise and Rita shoves her body back to her side of the desk with her elbow.

"Besides," she continues, "aren't you thinking about how important it is to identify this so that you can do it again?" _Again?_

Yes, apparently _again_ because when their shifted ended Rita followed Quinn back to her out-of-budget dorm and expelled her roommate with one word: experimentation. The red-haired-girl was obsessed with getting Quinn back to the version of the Yokohama port they each considered to be fictional, and so she read up on studies and managed to pluck out a few dream theory books from the library shelves in order to build the best experiment—er, experiments.

Experiment one: body oils. Rita read that something about a specific stench would tether her mind to this plane ( _sure_ ) while she goes on her mental adventure ( _if that's what you call it)_. They bought the oils from a closing stand in Union Square and Quinn couldn't help as though it was the biggest waste of thirty dollars in her life (and she paid for _Gravity_ on blu-ray). When the oils themselves weren't working Rita took a tip from _Teen Wolf_ and attempted to guide her (but she sounded more like Malia than lover boy Scott McCall). Quinn ended up gagging at the excessive smells of the oils and took a cold shower to freeze them off of her. The water woke her up, and in time for Rita to lay out a plan b.

Experiment two: watch and sleep. They ended up rewatching the second season (after arguing for a half hour on whether they should watch the sub or dub; Quinn argued dub because if she was to fall asleep she could do so to Dazai's delicious and smooth pudding voice, Rita argued that Dazai's delicious pudding voice was really the poop emoji) until the roommate insisted she be let back into the room to sleep. They moved to the student lounge to continue the experiment but Quinn couldn't get comfortable on the pleather couches. They laid on the floor and continued the binge but an RA complained about the noise during quiet hours.

After the antics—or really the steps squashed between them—Quinn eventually found she wasn't tired and they abandoned the idea to eat donuts.

"Maybe it was just a one-time thing." The two sit in a now empty park with a dozen donuts warming their laps (really ten as they each had one in hand). "How many times do you have the same dream?" Rita mumbles a response through her food, something that sounded like "never".  
"So," she swallows and now Quinn takes her own bite. " let's say, for some cosmic reason, it's not a dream."  
"Wha fo youf—eh—what do you mean?"  
"I mean, what if you're right, and you should have felt some kind of connection with your body outside of the dream or whatever and the reason you didn't was that it wasn't?" Quinn doesn't respond, instead grabbing another donut from the box. Rita took the opportunity to keep going down the rabbit hole.

"What if in your dream state your subconscious traveled through realities?"  
"There is no scientific reason for that." Quinn gets a bit of chewed up donut on the sidewalk. Rita chooses to ignore this.  
"Screw science—!" " _You mean fuck science_." "we're talking about a reality where people have supernatural abilities here." " _A fictional reality_." "So why wouldn't you be able to be one of them just suck in the wrong continuum."

Quinn swallows her final bite as she watches her coworker spin into madness using words she's only heard in _Star Trek_. She just wanted some show recommendations. "You're suggesting that I'm an ability user and that my ability is to shift my consciousness between realities?" Rita's lips are curled up into the largest smile without teeth, her eyes nearly sparkling in the lamplight, proud. Quinn sits still, worried. " _Okay_ …" she plays along, "if that's true then why should we believe that there's any reason I'll end up in that world again?"  
"Because that's where you belong?"  
"Sure, but if that's a real world and supposedly where I belong then all the characters _we_ think are fictional exist." Rita hums for her to continue. "And after spending all this time watching them, why should we think that they would allow me to go back?"  
" _Allow?_ "

Rita puts down her donut. Things are getting serious. "Why would you not be allowed to go back? It's your consciousness."  
"Yeah, but, the body my consciousness technically inhabits is with the Port Mafia."  
"So?"  
"Mori runs the Port Mafia."  
"And?"  
"Mori will kill me."  
"… _Is that logical of him?_ "

Quinn stops and puts down her own donut. Things _are_ getting serious.

* * *

A month passes and a stench stands out; it seems like a high-class Clorox with a lemon scent, artificial but nonetheless citrus. It's the scent of clean, but it's working against something musty, dirty, old, like mold that refuses to be cut out by any household or industrial strength cleaners. Quinn would have thought it was her bathroom, but she doesn't sleep in her bathroom. Yes, she is asleep again, but she is now awake somewhere foreign, somewhere clean.

She refrains from opening her eyes. Everything behind them is dark, something new compared to the white void that continually crept up on her as the days go by. She didn't dream anymore because of it, and she got too much sleep but always felt like she needed more. Her body was tired all the time, her mind tired, it was an odd sensation and for a while, she was starting to think that maybe Rita was right—this wasn't her world and her body knew it now.

But now she's afraid to open her eyes and see the world she is supposed to be part of, the world that is supposed to be hers.

She takes another breath and sees what she can tell about the room around her without waking to it; she is lying on her back, definitely in a bed, but the sheets are itchy like they're made out of an expensive material not made for comfort. Her hands are numb, unable to fist themselves around the top of the sheets where she presumes it lays as it's colder than the rest of her body. Her right hand is number, though, and she wants to scratch it hut she refrains from moving. To her right, she hears the faint beeping of machines. It sort of makes sense now—a hospital. Maybe she's safe, and they gave her body up, or maybe she's still where she considers home and just had a bad concussion.

Quinn begins to open her eyes now with less fear, but they meet an aged canopy and not a white tiled hospital ceiling. She blinks, like it's a trick of the light, but the excessive victorian fabric is still above her shielding her from any light. _That explains the cold_. She looks to the right to see her hand with an IV line poking out and leading up to where she finds the bag with half its fluid besides a beeping machine. _Heart monitor_. Behind the machine and the bag is the most hideous wallpaper she has ever seen, a pattern of diamonds with intricate symmetrical line-art in each, the art black against the wall's pale blue. It looks familiar, but Quinn puts it on watching too much _Fixer-Upper_ until she notices how it matches the color scheme of the of the canopy above her, the art also black against blue but more circular, less intricate. She looks back to the wall to see if she can see just exactly how different they are until she notices a panel stained, brown, like mud that someone kicked into the room and refused to wash off. But, she realizes, it's all at an angle. The splatters, the blood splatters she soon recognizes, like a cone that comes from her place on the bed. Their stains not even the slightest bit washed out, like they were left there for a reason, a memory.

She wants to groan. It's the room of the dead boss, and definitely no hospital. No wonder it's musty, and the artificial citrus is all too fresh. When was the last time someone stayed in that room longer than fifteen minutes to ponder their inanity?

"Good, you're awake." _now apparently._

Slowly she sits up while forcing her hands to clench the top of the blanket. She doesn't look towards the voice and instead out the window at the foot of the bed. The ornate pattern of the walls continues on the glass, etched to fill every spot and creating a shadow of the design onto the floor from the incoming sunlight. Quinn could only see nature as tree's lined each side of the sun like a frame. It was surreal, beautiful, calm, and then she turned to the corner of the room where Mori sat, waiting, _creeping_. He looks too comfortable, a threatening smile with his hands folded in his lap and his legs crossed over. At his feet sat Elise, dressed in pink frills with her hair pulled back in a matching headband furiously eating a slice of cake from a petite plate.

"Are you comfortable?"  
She doesn't reply and turns back to the machines, to the IV that pinched her hand, to the blood stains on the wall.

"You know what this room is."  
"Yes." her voice cracks, she almost feels the skin at the back of her throat break from the action.  
"How?" she turns to Elise on the floor, seated as though she's completely unaware of the conversation and lost in the frosting she licks off of the fork.

"How old was she when she died?" at the question, the young blonde looks up, first at Quinn on the bed and next at Mori seated above her. His smile falls, his hands clench. He quietly suggests she leave the room to get another snack, and as she does she watches Quinn with what she could have sworn were snake-like eyes. The door sends a creak vibrating through the walls of the room as it opens and closes, and when the lock is turned it seems to echo for too many seconds.

"That's an unfair question, Ms. Machada."  
"I'm sorry I assumed you would have an answer."  
"Fourteen. Her parents were devastated."  
"I'll bet."

Mori tsks. "You know a lot more than I thought."  
"Would you believe me if I said you're from a TV show?"  
"No, what's the genre? Comedy?"

Quinn looks back down at her hands. She wants to pull the IV out, scratch the skin, maybe throw it in his eye and give him an infection he couldn't even cure. Instead her hand just twitches—it is her hand now after all.

"So you know my name?"  
"I heard it from a tape."  
"The interrogation…" who said there needed to be someone on the other side of the two-way glass, why couldn't it be something? Or maybe it was the water cooler—she should have asked for a drink to find out. "That was new. Were the pillars full?"  
"I'd assume."

"It was probably just Dazai. I think Chuuya has a thing for him."  
There's a silence from the other side of the room but Quinn never looks away from her hands, the scars that she now claims as her own, the complexion that is now her counterpart.

"Do you know the situation of that body?"  
 _No_. "Yes."  
"Juno Masamoto. She stole a considerable amount of money before she was apprehended."  
 _Apprehended?_ "Sounds like a traitor."  
"Yes, well, we're having a bit of trouble finding where she kept it, or weeding out just who helped her."

"I can't help you." she looks back at Mori who is now standing to her left, towering, daunting. _Taunting?_ "Like I said: I don't know who this Masamoto is or what she's done before me." Above her, Mori smiles, like that's exactly what he's counting on.

"Ms. Machada, when you knocked yourself unconscious the body was more than just that. Some of our doctors almost felt the need to call it a coma but your physiology seemed perfect just… _Slow_. We waited a few days to see if it improved, then a few weeks, and then suddenly your condition seemed perfectly stabilized overnight—and then you woke up." as he weaves his tale she couldn't help but feel uncomfortable at how lost he was in his story, how infatuated he seemed with the problem. His character always intrigued her but she's barely held her conversational ground with his near masochistic mind already, let alone thought she would be an exceptional point of that focus. "Does this happen a lot?" he pouts as he poses the question, like a student who disagrees with a grade. "How often do you fall out of your body Ms. Machada?"

 _Fall?_ "This would be my first."  
"First, huh." Mori likes this answer. At least he _seems_ pleased while taking a step back from the bed to look at the machines on the other side. "You know, I can say the words and you'll be unplugged and tossed out of this house within minutes. You'll be alone in the city, erratic, an enemy to the mafia, and an equal opportunity hag for the rest of the hungry miscreants on those streets."

"But you haven't." Quinn points out, grasping at the straw that was a park bench and donuts where her coworker reminded her of her inter-dimensional value. "Because that would be illogical of you."  
He smiles again, and it's anything but warm.

"Like I said Ms. Machada, we're having a bit of trouble concerning our situation with a late employee of ours, and you seem to be having trouble with assuring the safety of your body should you encounter another falling episode. Only Port Mafia members reap the health and safety benefits of the Port Mafia, so I would decide wisely."  
"Decide… To work for you?"

His proceeding silence spoke volumes, so she sighs loud enough to serve as her own response but gives him one anyway; "Budgeting. Give me the numbers and I can cut your losses so you earn the money back and then some." Mori seems to have concocted some amusing response but she stops the spread of his smile and continues to speak. "But I want a box of brown hair-dye in return."

He still seems amused, he laughs even, hard enough that his eyes are closed. She bets he still sees everything, omnipotent, like a God, or one of his fallen apprentices who was forced to take on the title of demon.  
 _"_ _That sounds like a wonderful idea."_

* * *

 ** _AN AHEAD . . ._**

 _hey y'all, it's me, the girl who never updates anything but starts a bunch of random projects that seem promising but only last for about a month before i get bored and begin to rewatch thirty rock for the need to feel alive. anyway, to cope with voltron i went from dipping my toe to diving into the lava hellfire that is bungou stray dogs and then this happened. it's okay, i hate it too, but sometimes if you want something out of your head you gotta get it out on paper. i'm still working on the black paladins (slowly but surely) but i figured i'd begin this lil episodic thing. chapters will be sporadic, as usual, but definitely not as long as this one. think of it as a self insert bungou stray wan i guess that feeds my need for mundane!port mafia and serves as a fandom outlet that is not a group chat filled with people who have no idea what i'm talking about._

 _anYwAY follow my dazai playlist on spotify (because someone followed my oc specific playlists but not an iconic one i made for a canon character blasphemous). if you care about the bullshit i have to say on a daily basis outside of this or any of my other fics follow my spam ig too (which is basically stuck on chuuya loving hours until further notice). links for those are in my profile. give me love and appreciation (ie comments and pms) and i will do my best to respond to y'all since i love me some good attention._

 _stay warm stay safe stay sassy, jackie._


	2. Quinn Learns Names!

"Hi, I'm Quinn Machada and I'll be doing the books for the Port Mafia."  
"Quinn Machada. From here on out I'll be working on the mafia's budget."  
"I'm Quinn Machada, new to the Port Mafia—but only in spirit!"

She giggles and gives a small finger-guns. In the mirror she looks adorable; small hands jut out in a bright white blazer that only makes her look more innocent than she already is, short legs pivoted in a pair of sneakers that give a childish vibe from the bright red laces and patches from God knows what, and long brown hair that seemed to bounce as she moved. Quinn gags and kicks off her sneakers.

They gave her Juno's apartment, it was one of the few western-style homes they had that Mori thought she would feel comfortable in. He said everything that was in the late personalities house was hers. She assumed that was only because they couldn't find a trace of the money there, but was too afraid to tear up the floors and walls herself to check.  
It wasn't messy. In fact, it was almost too neat; no dishes were in the sink or on a mat waiting to be dried, no necessities were out and exposed on tables or on counters. Everything was tucked away in cabinets but even then they were squared away to the T. Edges of boxes lined up, toothpaste bottles, condiments, you name it.  
It was all so impersonal. She would have assumed they cleared every personal thing of Juno's out if it weren't for the closet. It was as organized as the rest of the house, but it screamed punk. No pants were left untorn, and even shirts had holes that Kanye West would charge thousands of dollars for. Everything was black, save for splashes of red and pink or silver studs. Leather was in surplus, in jackets, in pants, and even thigh-high boots with heels Quinn couldn't imagine _anyone_ walking in.

"This is so stupid…" she continues to talk to herself as she strips herself again. Quinn really couldn't relate to the rebellious closet that was left for her, and since today was deemed her first day she felt uncomfortable walking in looking like the person she was to replace. Already her hair experiment failed as the brown hair dye barely washed over the pink creating a muted purple, but she was also facing having to live with the few bad impressions she already made. Her first impressions with her real bosses may have been bad, but she didn't want the rest of the mafia to picture that mess of a girl. Maybe it was too late, maybe rumors about her have already spread amongst every rank, but she wasn't about to wear rip jeans to confirm any suspicions that she was a basket case.

"'Hi, you can call me Quinn!' No, that's too cheery. 'Hi, I'm Quinn Machada.' What if they think they can call me by my last name? 'I'm Quinn. I work the books now.'— _ugh_." her words jumble into her mouth as she falls forward onto a pile of black clothes inches above the bed. _Her bed_ , she reminded herself like the small factor was going to help her get more comfortable with the idea that she was more or less stuck here now. As she picks up and decides to pull on a thin sweater she really goes over the details of her circumstance;

Juno Masamoto, the original consciousness of the body Quinn is now dressing, was executed due to her crimes against the Port Mafia. Somehow the body was revived, but instead with Quinn as the bodies consciousness, Quinn who only knew about the Port Mafia because it was the antagonist group of an anime her friend suggested she watch. This allowed for some sticky situations between the Port Mafia's boss, Mori, and one of their executives, Chuuya, but now she was unstuck and told that she was granted protection should she work for them.  
Protection from what? Well, Quinn had a bit of a _Noragami_ Hiyori Iki situation on her hands as she seemed to drop from her anime-land body and back to her consciousness in the real world (if she could even call it that). The drop, however, only happened to her once so far. It's been about a week since she woke back up in Juno's body, and every time she goes to sleep it's the body she wakes back up in in the morning. But as per her and Mori's agreement, she is under their care; every night a nurse comes to the house to be sure she's stable and all throughout the day two mafia henchmen stand outside the apartments front door, waiting.

She still feels foreign, walking in a body that doesn't have the same footsteps as her own, eating with a mouth that is irregular to her, and even bathing has become an out of body experience as she's discovered _things_ on this body her own did not have—scars, tattoos, and oddly positioned birthmarks were only some of the things that really wigged her out. Sure it helped that she got that box of hair dye she asked for, but nothing really felt personal to her. Even her nose, that she could have sworn she broke when smacking it against the chrome interrogation table, is still pristine in its small shape, like the body needs to revert to the person it knows.

Three knocks sound off on the front door.  
"Your ride is here, Ms."  
Quinn signs and decides to accept the ripped jeans and black sweater that she last threw on, grabbing a random pair of shoes and thanking the mafia hunks as she leaves. _It's just first day jitters_ , she convinces herself, _what could rationally go wrong?_

* * *

"How did you know Dazai was being held here last month."  
 _Oh, jeez._

 _This was the right room, right?_ Quinn decides against answering her own thoughts or the situation before her and instead looks back at the smudged ink on her hand: tower four, floor thirty-two, office twelve. If this was supposed to be her office then why did she find Chuuya seated behind the desk as soon as she opened the door (and promptly closed to poorly hide her mistake). The room, she notices, is primarily bare; it's a small square with one large window to its right and a wall of filing cabinets to its left. Other than the desk and chair currently occupied at the center of the room there is no furniture. It's like an exorbitant cubicle of sorts.

"Dazai." Chuuya repeats, elbows resting comfortably on the empty desk and gloved hands clutching each other like he wanted to squeeze off their circulation. "How did you know, Masamoto?"  
"Machada—erm, Quinn."  
"Right, _Machada_." It's drawn out like a string, and he pulls apart each syllable like he was pulling apart individual threats. She would've found it hot had she not been terrified for her life. _Yikes._

"Deductive reasoning?" she clenches her teeth and opens her mouth in an awkward smile. He scowls, so she removes all immediate expressions from her face. Moments of silence pass as he eyes her from the desk chair, and though he's seated beneath her she still feels incredibly small. He wants her to go on, to give in, but Quinn really has nowhere to go nor anything to divulge so she slightly shrugs her arms as if it were an apology. She is still unsure how to explain her 'all-knowing' situation, and though Mori seemed to think she was joking when she told him his life was just a show to her she still counts that as telling her truth. Everyone else, on the other hand, she's unsure what to say. Chuuya still doesn't make a move to respond, until he's up and out of the chair pointing to the door behind her.

"If you really want to play the amnesia card then why don't we go through some introductions."  
"Oh, really? That would help a lot—!"  
"Great, let's start you with the Black Lizard."

"The who then?" Quinn nearly stumbles on her own feet and her own naivety following him out the door. He seems to fancy putting her in traps, but he also seems to have trouble grasping that she's not like his ex-partner who was able to get himself out of any tap of any design. Fu.

"Well if you're balancing our expenses then you may as well get acquainted with our most expensive group—and the ones who will be responsible for killing you once Mori finds out your lying." _Oh, so he wouldn't bother to kill her himself? That's disappointing._

As they make their way to the tower's basement through hallways, elevators, and stairs of the like Chuuya seems to remain in this talkative state. He brushes on the buildings history—tower four, second closest to the main tower and responsible for the business affairs; her floor, in particular, is where the expense brains work together to compile every receipt that could count against the mafias dime. Other floors include vaults for personal files, a human resources division head by Carol, and a variety of office spaces for teams to utilize. The building also houses the new and improved armor library and a simple shooting range used for demonstrating new weaponry in a 'safe space'.

"What's the security like here?" she asks after the third elevator they entered, noticing that he seemed to open doors and press floors as he saw fit. His eye twitches at her question and she realizes it was not a bright one for someone in her position. "I just—," whatever she wanted to qualify her question with escaped her as the elevator doors opened and the sound of gunfire split through all others. She instinctively brought her hands up to cover her ears and felt her face crunch at the sound, though she still followed Chuuya closer to the source of the noise.

The shooting range was as bright as the elevator; white walls surrounded a blue tennis-court looking floor that was encased in glass. It kind of reminded her of an ice hockey rink; people stood conversing on the opposite side of the glass where bleachers would be surrounding the spectacle of Canadians beating each other with sticks.  
Following Chuuya beyond the glass, she holds her arms tight against her ears while entangling her hands behind her head. It doesn't help muffle the noise at all considering they only get closer to the source, someone she can't even see as her eyes instinctively blink shut with every repetitive fire. They soon stop at the far end of the glass enclosure and Chuuya knocks against the glass. It's soft at first, like the gloves muffled the movement, but he does it again with a force that threatens to shatter all four walls. The gunfire stops and Quinn opens one eye.

"Oh my God…" she mutters while dropping her arms and opens her other eye, wide.

"Oh—Chuuya I am so sorry, I didn't see you come in—!"  
"Whatever, I need you to—,"  
"Really, I was just down here for practice I'm sorry I didn't—."

Though her voice was muffled on the other side of the glass Quinn couldn't deny she was staring at someone she considered a fictional blonde icon: Ichiyō Higuchi. The dripping respect from her worried eyes to her hands still clamped around the gun, she was just in awe of her power standing there before her and couldn't help but squeak.

"God, Higuchi, I am honestly such a fan the way you manage to assert your own control with your devotion to the mafia is incredible I—," her praise didn't get far, though, as she was cut off from the sound of two warning shots pointed directly towards Quinn. As the sound rings in her uncovered ears she jumps with a shrill scream, and on a bad instinct, she ducks behind Chuuya. She stands in her crouched position on the other side of the executive's coat as her arms cover her ears while a third shot is fired. Chuuya tsks and takes a step aside leaving her small shaking body exposed. She looks up as though to ask "why would thou betray me like this" but notices his face carries an irritated expression she remembers from when she took a second too long to look at her new hands.  
Quinn looks back at Higuchi on the other side of the glass. Between them, a web begins to form on the structure from where the three bullets made contact but did not go through. _Phew_. She clears her throat and stands up.

"Masamoto Juno. We had you professionally executed for your betrayal to the Port Mafia."  
"Ah, no, Quinn."  
Higuchi seems to hiss, her gun still up like a final shot could actually break through the glass.

"Machada here seems to have some conscious-hopping ability. She's negotiated her safety with the boss." Chuuya seems bored of this line that was probably fed to him by the boss himself but he recites it nonetheless. The blonde seems to fight the urge to retaliate, to argue that 'Machada' is fake, but she eventually puts down her gun and dismisses any apprehension.

"What do you request of me, sir?"

* * *

"Do you have much experience with bookkeeping?"  
"Uh, sort of?"  
"So why is that what you offered to the boss to keep you here."

Quinn decides that all elevator rides with Port Mafia members are stressful and not worth it. Maybe with this new body she would survive the thirty flights of stairs back to civilization, but there was no way to know as for now she's stuck there, next to Higuchi, trying to refrain from staring at her and her perfect ponytail and working up a response that made her sound like she was worth the time any of them have spent on keeping her alive.

"Well outside I work at a—I mean previously, before this I worked at a library and part of the job is managing the numbers for fines and replacement payments."  
Higuchi laughs, and it's not hard to imagine why.

"You think managing a business like the Port Mafia is on the same level as a _library_?"  
"Well—,"

The elevator doors open and the blonde makes her way out; Quinn decides it's more important to follow her pace than give her an answer.

"The Black Lizard is a strategically built group of force. All of their expenses are justified, I can't imagine what you think you can do to cut them down."  
 _Dry-cleaning_ , she considers but doesn't respond. Instead, she braces herself as Higuchi leads her down another cold hallway before knocking on a steel door. When it opens, Quinn finds she was exceptionally wrong thinking dry cleaning could actually be cut from their costs.

On the other side of the door is another of the mafia's gingers (though the truth of this is questionable as Quinn is well aware of his dubious intentions). He doesn't look like himself, though, likely because his jacket is gone and away with and his white t-shirt is brutally stained with crimson from edge to edge. The bandage on his nose is frayed and also dirtied, but the whole maniacal look is contrasted by his disinterested eyes.

"What?" Tachihara focuses on Higuchi in front of him who gestures with her head to let them inside. At that he finally looks at Quinn beside her; he scowls, something she's beginning to get used to, and eventually steps aside to let them in.

Inside is a white room currently being stained by its inhabitants. The other members and commanders of the Black Lizard are scattered ripping off dirtied layers of clothes, cleaning weaponry on chairs, or in some cases arm wrestling in corners without surfaces. Yes, if anyone was to kill her it would definitely be them, from the old man delicately taking off his gloves by a sink to wash his hands to the girl seated alone in the outskirts of the room scrubbing the blood off her blade.

"This is just like SAO..." Quinn whispers envisioning the battle they just came back from, eyes taking in the rest of the room before returning to Tachihara and Higuchi who give her the crazy questioning eyes Chuuya did. That she'll have to get used to too.

"What the hell is an SAO?" Tachihara asks, but unfortunately, she's still lost in all that's going on around the room, especially near the back where another door has plentiful space between it and any other inhabitants like everyone knows to avoid its entry.  
"Oh it's another show like you guys." her voice is nonchalant, a bit too enthralled in what could be behind the other door, but when his eyebrow raises too far up his head she remembers the slight cover she was trying to keep.

"Like a show." she continues. "You guys are like a show, cause you're so entertaining, you know, ha-ha!" her rambles continue a bit too long and her awkward laugh gains attention from others around the room. They're whispering, and Quinn soon realizes that she royally fucked up her second chance at a first impression.  
She clears her throat. "I'm Quinn." She adds with no other information and an outstretched hand to the faux ginger ahead of her. Tachihara only looks at her hand, and like he threatened to saw it off, she slowly retracts it back to her side. Real _entertaining._

"Executive Chuuya asked for me to bring Machada around for introductions."  
"Machada, huh? Looks like Masamoto to me."  
There are more short words shared between the superior assassin and the superior ranked, but Quinn still keeps her eyes around the room. Though the uniformed men and women are watching her with near bloodthirsty eyes there are still two that pay her no mind—the girl and her blade, and the old man washing his hands.

"This is Tachihara Michizo, he's a commander here along with Gin and Hirotsu in the back."  
Now they turn to look at her, like their names have that much power over them, and Quinn nearly needs to refrain from letting out a small whimper. "Machada is going to be responsible for budgeting so anything you need money-wise goes through her now."

"Quinn."  
"Huh?"  
"You keep calling me Machada but I really go by Quinn." she can picture the landslide her words may have caused in the back of her mind as Higuchi's face contorts so her eyes narrow and her mouth is agape.

"Machada is your surname, is it not?" a deep voice joins the conversation from Quinn's right, the sound of a man who has just finished washing his hands and is sliding back on a clean pair of white gloves. Next to her he is calm, non-threatening, like an old man asking for directions on the street or even her grandfather on her mother's side. Yet she still prefers to stand a bit closer to Higuchi and takes a step to her left.

"It is, but—,"  
"Then as per our formalities we'll refer to you as Machada. It's professional."

"But you don't call Gin by her surname."  
She makes the mistake of pointing, and finally everyone looks; across the room, the girl whose name was just spoken is still and Quinn worries that her now clean blade will be littered in her blood.

"That's different—!" Higuchi immediately waves her hands in the air like the motion can cut the tension and soon everyone's attention diverts back to their own business.

"Well what if I find another Machada, will you call me Quinn then?"  
"Where are you going to find another Machada in the Port Mafia?"  
"I don't know but I better start looking."

"Are you sure this isn't still Masamoto?" Tachihara asks and nearly steps in her face like he can discern her identity with one good look. She refrains from swatting him away.  
"No." Higuchi huffs and slouches a bit.

"Look, I'm American, we usually use first names—."  
"This is why I hate the Americans." Tachihara speaks up again, stepping back as though he's now bored until he realizes what either of them said. He mutters a wait-what and Higuchi sighs, catching them up on her supposed ability.

"Then use your American formalities, Ms. Machada."  
"Calling me 'ms' isn't really part of that…"  
"But calling me _Mr._ Hirotsu is."  
"I have no problem calling you Mr. Hirotsu, it's just that having all of you call me Ms. Machada or just Machada is… Weird, and…"

The three of them begin to circle her as she continues to stutter her words and eventually puffs up her cheeks, their pale color becoming a bright red as she stares cross-eyed at her nose and contains as much of the air in her mouth in this bubble as possible. Tachihara asks Higuchi to explain if this is part of her ability, but the blonde is so confused she can't bother to audibly deny or confirm.

Quinn exhales.  
"Is it wrong that I ask you to make this one exception with me?"

"Of course it is! You're just a numbers girl and we're—,"  
"I will do my best, Ms. Quinn."  
"Huh?!"

She gently smiles at Hirotsu's attempt, quietly thanking him amidst the burst of words Tachihara yells in disbelief she managed to break one of Hirostu's cardinal cultural rules. He probably yells for her country of origin to fuck off, and asks Higuchi is this is all really happening—if it's possible that someone beneath them is really requesting they change something so basic to them.

* * *

 _ **AN** **AHEAD . . .**_

me: im not gonna write long chapters for this ! theyre gonna be short quick updates until i can get this fandom out of my system!

me to me, writing this chapter rounding to four thousand words in a eight page document: f Uc K yOuR Ru LE s

the time i could have spent actually finishing this i was instead pining after the return of ssr underboss dazai gOD he is a DREAM we love that twelve time azure attack king but i'm still mad that i've spent all my stones and limited tickets tryna get him again i've literally completed this whole game guys i have no more levels to play how in the fuckery am i gonna get stones and tickets for when the band ssr cards come out if you think i am this obsessed for the dark age dazai card then you have no idea what a thirst trap band!chuuya is for me gODdAyUM

anyway had to rant; hope y'all have a nice weekend and stay warm, stay safe, stay sassy—jackie.


	3. Quinn Learns War Tactics!

"Two percent?"  
"Yes, well, four but the changes to the plastic straws at any of your businesses won't completely change the values until next month and that's also if we assume people still buy packaged drinks at the same rate."

"Straws really make up one whole percent of our monthly income?" Mori is astounded, flipping through the leather-bound binder with interest. In it houses all Quinn has done in her first few weeks in her new position; a collection of scanned receipts, monthly to annual income rates from a variety of sections, and even handwritten notes in the margins between them make up a bulk of this paper, everything labeled at the top according to what the costs pertained to with a final big red number next to it—her concluding value. From where she sat, the boss seemed impressed with her work, or maybe just amused at the fact that she cant add for shit and still had to cross out numbers to carry the tens to the next digit. But she was able to cut their current monthly costs by two percent in just a short time, that had to stand for something.

"Most plastic does, sir, straws are just the best cut. Others just don't have as cost-effective alternatives or only create more costs, like in water billings, for instance."

He hums at her response, and mutters the single word of "Fascinating." Behind him, Elise groans, bored, doodling on his office wall with a marker Quinn wasn't entirely sure was washable. He eventually closes the binder entirely and hands it back to her from across his desk.

"Make sure the necessary people find out about the straws. That could help immensely." he says with a light wave, one that meant she was dismissed. Quietly she thanks him for allowing her the time to speak with him, even saying goodbye to the clearly under stimulated Elise behind his chair, but when she turns to leave she stops a bit short of her ways to the ornate door that let her in.

"I'm sorry, I just have a question." Quinn turns back to the boss while flipping through her binder again. He sighs, quietly, but must have some interest in what she's about to say because he still watches her with a polite smile and asks her to proceed.

"I understand that some people are a bit suspicious about me still, but having code names for everything really doesn't help. I mean, c-stash, that's clearly cocaine, and you guys are either selling it under market value or just not at the right rates, but how was I supposed to know and make sure to tell you to adjust accordingly? And all these monthly charges for gumdrops, what is that really? Ammunition? Cleaning supplies? How am I supposed to attempt to cut that when I don't even know what it is."

"It's gumdrops."

"Right, and the—wait what?" the binder nearly falls out of her hands, and while masking the process she clears her throat. He continues.

"Ms. Machada, you are aware of the Armed Detective Agency, right?"  
She debates lying. He continues.  
"Their number one detective brings in most of their profits, and from my research, he spends his portion on all types of candies and sweets. He's often found leaving their many wrappers at jobs, I just had someone follow that trail and we ended up finding out that he always keeps a stash of gumdrops in his pockets when traveling on his most lucrative of jobs."

Quinn bites the inside of her cheek and narrows her eyes, processing both what exactly he was saying and why he felt the need to explain so much of that to _her_. "So, the Port Mafia buys all the gumdrops in Yokohama to stifle him?"  
"Precisely."

Mori seems pleased with himself and leans further back in his chair, hands in his lap, Elise still behind him drawing along the wall though now it appears she's made a man who isn't unlike the detective that was just mentioned. She even added the pattern in Rampo's coat.

"You do this every month?"  
"As soon as the shipments come into the city."  
"And this works?"

The bosses smile falters. "He's forced to travel miles in order to get this stimulus but he's incapable of traveling alone. This takes another of their agents off of work and lowers the opportunities the agency can take advantage of in order to create credible success in the city."

"But you're still giving him access to the candy, and if this is a recurring thing what makes you sure he hasn't figured it out and found someone to deliver the gumdrops to him from another city?"

Elise's marker breaks into two, and Mori's pupil's shrink, constrain. Quinn clears her throat.

"I just mean, wouldn't it be easier to just buy the entire gumdrop business rather than limited supplies?" the silence stretches, so she continues. "You have the opportunity to make it completely inaccessible to him by restricting Japan sales entirely while building another line of profit."

"Won't this count as another expense?" his question sounds more like he's edging her to continue rather than being of pure interest, like he has already decided where he stands on the issue, like he's finished the game of conversation.

"Yes, now, but the minus you have for buying out the gumdrops every month has the potential to become pure profit by the end of the year, sooner even."

He waits. She waits. She hopes her math is right.

"And you'll put a bigger strain on Ram—er, this detective character. There might be a brief period of madness while he realizes their inaccessibility putting a strain on the Agency's progress." they wait again, his look unchanging.

Soon Elise giggles and twirls back to Mori's side. He smiles now, too, but it's not sinister; it's as childish as the girls and even comes with his own small laugh.

"Very well," he decides with another wave of his hand. "Notify the relevant associates in your department so you can bring a written proposal to me as soon as you can, be sure to mention this order is from me, keep suspicions at bay."

Quinn smiles now too, but she's not sure how to respond to the offer just given to her. Instead she bows again, thanking him for his time and for considering the proposal she had no idea she was really proposing. She's halfway to the ornate doors again when Mori speaks up this time, halting her steps.

"Ms. Machada… is there a particular reason why you know the market value for narcotics?"  
There's hesitation as she decides her answer, aware that the blanket statement "Narcos, 2015" will not go over well.

* * *

 _ **a/n ahead . . .**_

yEaH so i ended up spending all my stones trying (read failing) to get that ssr executive!dazai i now only have thirty five stones left and am suffering ™ this lil login promotion better fill me up good.

also, this is what i meant by 'short' chapters not that crap i pulled before with chapter two, length wise at least uh an explanation for why the last chapter was shit that i do not have but sometimes in this world we just put effort into things that are lost causes like uh My Life. i just wanna try and keep making content rather than fussing over quality for this which, yeah, thats bad but also: content!

again thanks for taking time out of your day for reading this y'all, especially to those who followed/favorited, i telepathically send all my love and adoration to all of you.

stay warm, stay safe, stay sassy—jackie.


	4. Quinn Goes Shopping!

At this point, she realized she needed to take up sewing if she was to wear any clothes without holes in them. Pants, shirts, and jackets for worn out reasons all had points of exposure where she would prefer to have a pocket if not just fabric. Quinn, however, had no salary. She never discussed it with the boss or the redheaded executive that still eyed her as a threat if they were ever in the same building, but reaching even a dress in the back of Juno's wardrobe that had a series of striped fabric as it fell further down her thigh reminded her that she needed clothes that looked less like the rebellious pink-haired anime based girl and more like her brunette conservative self.  
And maybe some crop tops, because she had the body for that now.

She brings these wardrobe concerns up with Higuchi when she finds her in 'the break room' of the fourth tower, a room that is essentially what it sounds like; it's white, like the room the Black Lizard was staining weeks ago (something she finds oddly common) with chrome tables situated throughout. Along one wall there's a coffee machine, a vending machine (that has meals, not snacks; Quinn was thrilled), and other doohickies that she couldn't identify, the smaller ones on chrome counters similar to the tables.

 _They like chrome now_ , she thinks as she fills up a cup of coffee in the nearly empty room before noticing Higuchi alone at a table in the center, a notebook next to her and a meal in front. When she walks up to her she waves with a bright "hello" and the woman nearly jumps. She seems about ready to apologize before she notices just who it was who disturbs her. Her immediate frown almost makes Quinn frown herself.

"What?" her voice is curt, clearly disinterested and bothered. In front of her, the brunette swallows, feeling a bit guilty.  
"Oh, uh, just wanted to say hi."  
"Hello?"  
"Its, uh, Quinn."  
"You mentioned that a lot."

The cold attitude she receives seems odd to her, but she remembers her circumstance again, something not everyone _wants_ to get used to let alone _is_.

"Can I sit?"

Higuchi seems to stare at her, her logo-less mug, and then finally the torn side of the dress she wears on her leg. "You sure dress like Masamoto." she says with a nearly dreaming look on her face, eyes blank like her minds somewhere else. Quinn considers it a possible lesbian tendency, but she doesn't linger on the thought since she would hate for the world to convince her she's straight.

"When they gave me her house her clothes were in it, not much I could do otherwise…" she trails off, hot mug in hand as she stands waiting for the blonde to give her an okay to sit. The conversation starter seemed to do the trick as she gestures with her hand to take the chair.

"They gave you a dead woman's clothes?"  
"Uh, provided me?" she attempts to give it a positive spin and Higuchi scoffs.

"If you weren't bound to her closet than how would you dress."  
"More blazers, definitely," she says immediately, and as she does her eyes grace over Higuchi's own attire. "A lot like you actually, professional."

Higuchi seems to blush at the compliment (or maybe just the positive attention) and finally gives her a smile. "I do dress really well, don't I?"

Quinn laughs, and the smile in front of her falters.  
"No, you do! You do! I would love to be in your shirt right now." _that came out wrong._ Gladly, she seemed to ignore this, becoming less wary of the newcomer presence all the while. Her shoulders seemed to loosen, and she began to bend over to pick at her lunch in front of her while the two continue talking.

"I think I just need someone to take me shopping." by now they've been sitting in the break room for over an hour, and it's slowly began to fill with all kinds of mafia members in that time. Everyone else seemed isolated, or grouped to their own people, and Quinn sort of feels like she's in her dining hall—except now she doesn't have to call Rita to see if she's anywhere to eventually sit and eat by the library stairwell; she's finally in the hall and experiencing what it's like to be grouped with a people.

"Well I would, but I really need to be taking care of my sister."  
"Oh totally, I just mean I don't think I could go out alone to shop—,"

"Did someone say shop?" there's a foot on the table as a new voice speaks, a big brown boot Quinn knows belongs to a certain faux ginger assassin.

"Yes?" she's wary as she looks up to see him smiling with teeth, like a shark seeing its prey beyond the reef before he attacks.

What she did not expect was for his attack to be, literally, taking her shopping. At the crack of dawn on her designated day off there's a knock on her door, and lo and behold its Tachihara himself offering to buy her the new wardrobe she wanted if she just came on some stops with him. She remembers searching for Elise behind him, thinking the girl would have commanded he be the one to carry her goods but there's no one—even the mafioso's responsible to wait outside her door are gone, or maybe they also have the weekend off.

"I just need to get some other goods it won't be too long." as they step on the train he repeats this line of his while looking around. At first, it seems absent minded, like he's merely being cautious or something of the like, but when Quinn attempts at conversations he's too lost in glancing around the train to respond, and when she asks what exactly they're 'picking up' he replies "no chocolate for me, thanks."

"So, where to?"  
"Uh…" even as they get off the train, Tachihara seems twisted, looking for something in the crowd of commuters that Quinn was just too short to see. He mentions something about northwest entrances, then something about "that damn pin" before she feels him grab her wrist and practically drag her through the crowd. He might have yelled "this way!" but her blood pumps too loud in her ears from the excessive speeds her feet run to keep up with him. Eventually he stops, let's go, and her face nearly bumps right into his back hitting her nose again; instead she trips and nearly falls on a nearby shop window.

"Yes, here, lets go in!" he urges before abruptly pushing himself through the front door and into the store whose window Quinn still braced herself against. She takes a second to catch her breath but the peace was broken as she hears a loud knock in front of her face—Tachihara's hand repeatedly knocks against the glass as he seems to be whispering to her, but because his voice is so low and he's inside she can't hear him, and when she tries to read his lips he seems to be saying something about her being a drama queen. She rolls her eyes at him before walking in; _drama queen my ass, buddy._

When she does make it inside she's hit with a stench, many stenches actually. Only a few steps in and Quinn is already having a coughing fit in the store.

"What are you doing?" Tachihara's words seem to hiss but she only waves a hand, unable to respond until she swallows and lets out one more cough.

"What is this, a perfume store?"  
"Uh, yeah."

Looking around she realizes, yes, they are in a perfume store; ornate glass bottles lie atop different shelves and dainty slim attendants are poised next to them. Quinn almost thought they were robots until one picked up the bottle and spritzed its contents right in front of her face making her cough again. The lady said something about how the scent was a rosy mist but to her lungs it felt like fire mixed with nuclear waste. She nearly heaved until Tachihara took her arm again and pulled her to another side of the store.

"You really need to keep it together, Machada,"  
"I'm trying—," she takes a second to bring her elbow to her face and let out a gnarly sneeze "can I just wait outside while you get your stuff?"

"No!" these are the first words Tachihara says at a normal volume, and realizing it he immediately ducks as though whoever was in the store would turn to him. Quinn is too busy coughing up a lung into her shirt to notice who exactly was in the store that he was trying to hide from, but she too ducks.

"You stink." he tells her blankly as they both come to a regular stand again. Her eye twitches and she watches him and his angsty steps and far looking eyes. _She stinks?_

"I don't think this will make me smell any less like—what, no, I shower twice a day!"

But apparently, she stinks enough that Tachihara demands she looks around and find something to mask the existential stench. _Whatever_. Though they walk around the store together and she asks him what he thinks of this scent and that, he still seems to look around, distracted about everyone else in the store. There are about five other people save for the groups of teenaged girls that come in for samples, giggle, and then leave. Unfortunately for Quinn, the only people she gets a good look at are these young girls; Juno's height was considerably smaller than she's used to, and looking up on her tippy tones with a craned neck was beginning to get uncomfortable. After a while, she stopped trying to see what it was Tachihara was so wary of and chalked it down to casual Port Mafia paranoia. She eventually began to find some scents she actually liked and finally held them out to him as though to ask him to commence the check-out phase until he shakes his head, tells her perfume really does stink more than her, and pulls her out of the store and back onto the Yokohama streets.

They go to a shoe store after that, but the same happens again; when Quinn gets comfortable and picks out a few things she likes he tells her its a bad idea, or that there's better quality elsewhere, and in a rush he brings her out of the store and to another. Even a brief stop at a crepe kiosk fell short when, just as she was about to take a bite into the masterpiece, he immediately pulled it out of her hands and tossed it in the garbage claiming the treat was nothing compared to the competition. But he didn't take her to the competition, only dragged her along to other stores that were just not suitable.

Finally they end up at a tailor, and while slinking in the back where the suit patterns hung Quinn hears a voice that makes her perk up.

 _"_ _Ah, aren't you the best."  
_ It's not like she's close to the source but she can hear the smooth tone, the delicately poised and yet undeniably powerful female voice she could only attribute to a voice actress. Looking in the mirror beside her Quinn takes a glance at the other patron in the store currently checking out a white box. The woman stands tall in her heels, shimmering black tights, a perfectly pleated knee length skirt and a crisp white dress shirt neatly tucked in all around. The attention to detail is astounding, and Quinn does everything to avoid turning around and gawking at her in a more noticeable manner.

"Tachihara," she nudges the shoulder of the assassin next to her, her eyes never leaving the reflection in the mirror just as his own never left the physical view of her back—though where she looked at the woman with a longing admiration, his eyes were filled with a fire that could not be put out by peace.

He doesn't respond.  
"Tachihara, look,"  
"Yeah it looks great you should totally get that."  
"Get wha—? No, is that Yosano Akiko?"

Now he turns, he looks away from the back of the lady who was named losing her as she walks out of the store to move the hateful fire onto Quinn. She nearly shrinks away from him as he does, as though she can feel the heat, as though he really intends to burn her to a crisp by sight alone.

"How do you know that name?" he presses, and she hesitates a bit before answering, mostly out of fear and less out of thought.  
"She's, agency, the agency, isn't she—?" the words don't come out right, and she hesitantly looks back down at the rack she was currently shifting through, though even not looking at him she can tell he's still watching her, a ticking time bomb.

It all made sense though; the excuse to shop (and on his own terms), the wayward stores and locations where he really picked nothing up, and the curse under his breath every time they got lost surrounding the phrase "that damned pin". Oddly enough, however, she wasn't drawn to the glittering hairpin when looking at her reflection, and for a second Quinn nearly thought she didn't see it at all.

"You must really take the war with the agency seriously if you're willing to follow them through this hell." she speaks up after too many moments of silence; she keeps the words vague, but she knows just exactly why he aimed to follow the doctor. She slaved over finding translations of Tachihara in his Hunting Dogs uniform for weeks in her last month in reality, and it's not like that plot point logically came out of nowhere. It festered, he festered, waiting.

To this, however, he merely shrugs; the fire in his eyes subsides like he isn't a pot close to boiling over, like he's not waiting for a disaster in particular to strike, like he doesn't have a reason to strike at all.  
"They're our enemy, I need to know them by heart" he says, now looking out of the shop window, searching for the woman and her newly purchased clothes. As he does Quinn readies herself for another rough sprint, taking a deep breath and looking away from the rack of enticing clothes before he soon turns back to the very rack she moved from and separates the hangers. He goes through a couple of the suits, casually, and Quinn stares at him with blank eyes like she's watching a ghost play _Just Dance_.

"What are you doing?" she asks as he pulls out a pair of pants and begins to hold it at her torso. He actually looks involved, oddly enough, but soon tosses the hanger over her shoulder even tough the pants were clearly too large for her now petite body.

"I'm looking for shit without holes in it." he takes out a jacket as he speaks and does the same toss of the hanger over her shoulder. Though both the words and the action are passive, Quinn cant help but smile. She adjusts the clothes on her shoulder deciding to not say anything about the poor likelihood they would fit and joins him back at the rack. Perhaps she would just have to take up sewing and take in all the seams herself.

* * *

 _ **AN** **AHEAD . . .**_

so i just wanna say i had fifteen hundred affinity stones and like the dumb bitch i am i spent them all trying to get this new up and comer ssr kunikida and now i have FORTY stones and i can only get two fifty by completing this event and i am really mad at myself because I DIDNT EVEN GET THE KUNIKIDA i'm preemptively crying in case i don't get band ssr chuuya because this is what i do but also MIDTERMS KILLS ASS y'all know that bobs burgers "your ass is grass and i'm gonna mow it" gif thats midterms me and i dont even have real exams for midterms can you beleve it !

rants aside hope y'all enjoyed the update (i'm sorry i did this thing where i started like five hundred words for each of the next five chapters but then did not go back to any of them until tonight but thats also because i've been in gotta-fuck-chuuya mode for the past month and only one of those chapters had chuuya in it hngh withdrawls am i right ginger fans) lots of thanks again for the favorites, follows, and reviews, honestly those keep me going whenever i idiotically feel like i should delete this.

stay warm stay safe stay sassy, jackie


	5. Quinn Meets Dazai!

_Follow the map, follow the map, follow the map, follow the map._

"Holy fuck."  
" _Excuse me?_ "  
"Oh, gosh, I'm sorry!"

Quinn hurriedly scurries in through the front doors and around the suited bodies that watch her with furrowed eyes. She can't tell if they're confused as to why someone like her is there—someone whose rushed and curses under her breath at every second and who has papers flying in every direction despite holding a large binder—or how someone like her could even exist. But she can't think about it, she has a delivery.

For some reason, Mori decided she was at a point where she could handle larger monetary affairs. The most important of these was receiving the signature of a government official on a tax form she filled out for the month, or at least something that looked like a tax form to her. "If you're going to close then do it properly." he told her, yet it was hard to get the directions of what exactly that meant from him or anyone else after she was escorted out of his office.

Eventually, she found the person she was to contact and the place, but the car service that normally took her between the towers and her humble abode said they couldn't go down there and directed her to the train.

That was a ride of its own for Quinn, but figuring out which of the buildings she was supposed to be in with her poor directional skills was a whole different story. She had gotten off on three different stops before this one only to be told she was in the wrong place each time. Now she was sure she was in the right place, but it's an hour past her scheduled meeting time.

"Is this, uh, this?" she brings the paper with the scribbled address to the face of what looked like a security guard in the building. He didn't even flinch as she came close to touching his nose, and instead of speaking he nodded.

"The elevators are to the left." his voice is monotone and she pulls back the paper, shouting a loud thank you as she rushes in the direction of her left. Lucky for her the elevator was wide open and empty, and slipping inside she scanned each of the buttons before knocking her knuckle into the button of the eleventh floor making it light a dim red. The doors begin to close now and she begins to sigh in relief believing she made it.

The elevator doors nearly reach their close before a voice calls beyond. _"Hold on!"_ she curses under her breath; jamming her thumb repeatedly into the 'door close' button she hopes whoever it was would give her this elevator ride to herself to think about what the _fuck_ is happening until an arm slides between the closing doors. She yelps, picturing the limb being crushed by the impact alone but they slowly glide open again. As they do she stares at the unharmed arm—bandaged.

She swallows down an impending doom.

"Wow! That could've been painful!" the man steps onto the elevator, an elated expression built with a wide grin and closed eyes. Dazai's face is so beautiful she almost wants to cry being able to see what exactly his features look like in depth beneath his mop of chestnut hair, but soon decides looking at the trench-coat-bandaged man was not going to turn out well for her. She turns to the front of the elevator and doesn't reply as it begins its ascent.

"Can you hit the eleventh floor for—oh! You're headed there too, huh?"  
She doesn't respond.

"Not one for talking?"  
She can feel his eyes scanning her in, and for a second she wonders if he knows her—Juno, Masamoto, the her that was her before she was now her. Quinn's hands clutch the binder to her chest and any loose papers begin to wrinkle between her now clenched fists.

"Bringing top secret documents to the chief?"  
"Chief?"  
"Oh, so you do speak?" he laughs at her small vocal action and it nearly makes her stomach drop. It's a bright sound, yet deep enough to resonate in her god damn soul. She makes the mistake of glancing at him in this action, and before she could take in his features she's met with a brown-eyed gaze clearly staring her down, specks of red reflecting in the light ever so slightly.

She coughs as she faces the front again as if to cover up a mistake. _Why is this elevator so fucking slow…_

"You're new to town." there's a sense that his words are a question rather than a statement and Quinn wonders if she should be pleased for causing this slight discrepancy in his character. She still doesn't answer and questions how the elevator could only be on floor three.

"Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?"

Quinn begins to cough hysterically at his words, well aware the compliment is just part of his charade but still finds the words to be anything but she expected. She considers steering the direction into polite conversation by making a false alibi, but he continues too quickly.

"How often do you think about your lifespan?"  
"The one that shortens every day?"

He raises an eyebrow at her comment, or maybe just at her timing.

"You shouldn't be wasting all your skills on delivering papers if it's so short then. You could do so much."  
There's something pensive about his voice here, and she doesn't like it one bit. Though his voice is soft it has the emotional effect of nails on a chalkboard: unnerving.

"Oh? What exactly do you do with your short lifespan then?" she treads carefully, seeming disinterested with her gaze still ahead at the elevator lights. It's on seven now, she is so close.

"I'm part of an elite group of private investigators." somehow she hears the theme music blending with the sound of chimes. She turns to him with narrowed eyes, almost about to ask him if he hears it too until she noticed his expression—his grin is back, but it's a bit more smug with his open eyes as his chin rests in the space between his pointer finger and his thumb, a trademark move for him that's as sleek as it was in 2D.

"Sounds like rigorous work," she rolls her eyes t find floor nine lit as they continue to ascend. "Are your coworkers any good?"

"Just the best. And yours?"

The elevator falls cold for a second in her brisk turn to look him in the eye. She feels so small now, realizing just how tall he is; it makes sense, even Chuuya is a bit of a giant to her. His chin is still between his fingers but now it's the tips as he strokes the skin. It makes him look studious and threatening, and the way the reds in his eyes continue to shine in the light reminds her of the way her father would look at a puzzle before putting all the pieces together in a sheer minute.

She looks down at the binder in her arms and the loose papers that were caught in her uneasy fingertips. "I work at a bank." she decides to say after a while, a lie that had its safeties. "I can't exactly speak for my coworker's reputations." she fakes a small laugh with the words and is afraid he could hear it, but when she glances back up his expression is the same.

"I don't trust banks." they reach the tenth floor as he speaks, and his eyes are finally off of her frame and to the doors ahead of them. Unfortunately, they're too dull for her to know if he's really staring at his own distorted reflection, like how she can't tell if he's really talking about banks or another organization as brutal.

"I can see how you would feel that way." the doors open at eleven, and with a glance and a nod she steps off—but she waits, expecting him to do the same and to give him one last departing word.

Instead, he waves at her from inside the elevator. "It seems eleven is the wrong floor!" he says with a smile, devilish, but falsely innocent enough to mask. Her eyes narrow, nearly twitching as she watches him grin until the elevator doors close and it begins to descend. But she stands there for a bit, unsure if the interaction even happened.

"Holy fuck."

* * *

 ** _A/N AHEAD . . ._**

 _me: there is a time and place for smut and that is now—_

 _me to me: this is rated T JACKIE_

 _quinn and dazai have an interesting relationship in this fic considering quinn's all-knowingness is brought to the same scale as his even though her actual intelligence is that of a thimble. this comes into play a lot more later but yeah, wyld stuff, hes a virgin killer that dazai. also i think i'm going on the route of fleshing out quinn as an oc rather than having her play second field to the bsd verse and,,, not sure how i feel about that but i mean her whole existence was meant to judge circumstances that she would otherwise not know in her own life it's just sliding away from casual to chaotic but i dunno i have like twelve chapters drafted out at this point im just gonna keep going with it._

 _anyway guess who spent all her ability stones trying to get ssr cards even though she swore she would wait for band!chuuya again uH THIS GAL. im doing my best which is not at all but hey i decided im gonna minor in data visualization instead of screenplay writing so thats neat._

 _thanks again for all the follows, favorites, and preemptively the reviews! i really appreciate it. stay warm(ish, since its really spring now), stay safe, stay sassy—jackie._


	6. Quinn Tries Truth Serum!

Quinn was tired, and she wasn't sure what to make of it.

Every day she dealt with slow mornings from a combination of not _wanting_ to wake up or having the energy to do so, but today there was something else that weighed her down. She could have sworn she remembered it from some time before but her brain was too tired to signal her as to why. So she slumped out of bed and to her shower, pulling on the laziest piece of dress possible before leaving to work. In the car ride, she napped like a boss, but she must have fallen into some deep sleep because the driver had to call her name a few times before she realized they arrived.

She thought she just needed tea, so before heading to her office she took the elevator up to the break room ready to fill a mug (or three) and start her work, but when the doors open she was met with a face that jolted her awake—for a few seconds.

"Ah, Machada, just the one I was looking for!" Chuuya's voice is more boisterous than usual, or maybe she just never spent real time with him to know what he was like outside the constant interrogation-mode he had on whenever they were in the same room which, again, was not that often. The last time they spoke aside from her 'first day' was when she was walking out of Mori's office one morning and he questioned her why exactly she was let in alone. He couldn't say much after when she told him it was Mori's decision, but he seemed to growl like a dog when he pushed past her and into the room. That was about a week ago, and maybe it was just a bad day, but she still felt like she needed to be on high alert when in his presence.

Still, her mind begged her otherwise, and when she opened her mouth to say a good morning she yawned instead. Quickly her hand covered her mouth and she turned away as if it were indecent, but he seemed to lightly laugh at the spectacle, if one could call it that.

When she straightened herself out again ready to apologize she was met with an outstretched hand holding up a mug. In the time it took her to compose herself, she realized, he must have stepped onto the elevator and had them go who knows where. She can't see the numbers and what direction they're going in since he's in front of her, so in an attempt to gain some sort of sense as to what was happening (and to not continue being rude) she took the cup with a thanks.

"You look like you need it." he still stands in front of her view of the elevator numbers, and her back is already turned to the window so she couldn't see if the city was getting smaller. As she takes a sip she hums an affirmative response to his statement and repositions herself to stand just a bit less slouched— it was also a poor attempt to see the numbers, and though she can see one her brain seems to think they're simultaneously going up and down. She takes a gulp of the tea despite its heat, she does need this.

"So how are you adjusting?" he asks, hands in his pockets as he observes her. What he's looking for that's different from the start of the month she was already there for she's not sure, but with another sip she makes a nodding motion with her head.

"It's going really—well? Is that one proper? I think it's going good but maybe it's just well, they seem to have different connotations though." Quinn is unsure if she even thought the words before she spoke. It seemed like a sort of word vomit she expected was induced by her tired brain, so she lightly laughs it off. Wait, is that why she's laughing? She's literally laughing, her voice echoing in the elevator meaning it was more than a bit of a chuckle. Immediately, she stops, her mouth popping shut as she fills her cheeks with air and furrows her eyebrows; her defense mechanism

Chuuya clearly finds this situation amusing, but he doesn't laugh as much as she does. His eyebrows are raised a bit like he finds her talk to be confusing ( _and why wouldn't he?_ ) but his smile makes it a bit more comforting than threatening.

"I'm sorry," she continues after a long exhale to empty her mouth of its blowfish air "I'm just really tired, but it's not like a sleepy tired it's more like I'm still waking up?" he makes no sign to say anything further so she takes another sip and keeps going. "I've been getting enough sleep though, Juno's bed is like a marshmallow it's great. Actually, my roommate has this theory that it's because I oversleep but I don't think she knows what the fuck she's talking about—no wait! I'm sorry! I shouldn't have said that. I mean, not that you don't know what fuck is as an adjective or a verb. I'm sure you're well versed in both of its uses—not that you shouldn't be! Adjective, verb, both are very natural I'm sure you fuck as a verb in a healthy way and use it as an adjective, you know, during the verb, or even in conversation because that's fine—,"

"Machada."  
"Fuck is your verb to use—word! Word to use, and—you know, I really don't like it when you call me that." she frowns in the middle of her tangent, he smirks.

"Is that the truth?"  
She waits a few seconds and looks up a bit, thinking. "Yes," she decides to say with the full confidence as someone who says no to a BestBuy's rewards card. "it is the truth, I'm glad you realized that, thank you Chuuya. Should I call you Chuuya? Should it be Executive Nakahara?"

He sighs as she continues on this new, bringing a hand out of his pocket and to his forehead to rub his temples. In the same seconds, she takes another sip of the tea; it was really working wonders.

"Just, call me whatever, okay, for now do you think you can answer a few questions?"

She hesitates as she swallows another gulp. "Are they going to be fun questions or—?"  
"They're just going to be questions, okay, so first tell me your name?"

"My name?" she frowns, was she still tired or was this just not a fun question? "Jacqueline Machada, but everyone calls me Quinn because I was named after a piece of shit aunt. It's bad juju to say her name so I make it as easy as possible for people to avoid it."

"So you remember your family?"  
"Uh, yeah? The f in family stands for first." she taps the side of her head as if to say "duh", even though she does add "Duh."

Chuuya, however, is not playing any games or enjoying her charades. "What do you remember?"  
"Uh, my parents, two brothers, a fuck ton of aunts, uncles, and cousins—oh, sorry, _shit ton._ Actually, I don't know all their names but I could probably pick them out in a police lineup if I had to." Quinn smiles at this, proud, but soon drops it. "I'm so bad with names I really don't know how I manage to remember everyone's in the Port Mafia, maybe it's just the intrigue?"

"Intrigue, huh?" he shifts a bit in his stance as if she finally said something worth him hearing. "What's so intriguing about Dazai that you remember his name?"  
"Ooh, is this a trap?" she laughs a bit, and though Chuuya stands amused he doesn't seem to find it funny when she calls their 'conversation' a trap. "You know, he is much more handsome in person so I can understand what you see in him."

"I don't—! Wait, in person?" he takes a step closer, and she wonders why it doesn't start a fire in her head or her pants. The tea, she decided, has dulled all her senses.

"Yeah I met him a few days ago I think it was? Maybe a week, I don't actually have a calendar so I don't know what day it is—hey, can I get a calendar?"  
"Fuck your calendar, why did you meet Dazai?"  
"Oh jeez, okay, that wasn't the fuck as a verb I was talking about but I feel wrong for not thinking about that—." his eye twitches the further away she gets from his question so she takes a deep breath and goes on about the elevator ride that left her a bit too unsettled.

"It was a fluke he got on the elevator when I was getting those documents signed for Mori, he didn't ask me anything though, and I lied about my position there's no way he could know me or why I was there—," she's reminded of the sinking feeling she felt when stepping off that elevator, and his smug grin as he rode it back down. She looks into the mug again, like she wants to sip again, but for a tea to have that much power seems unreasonable. Not only was she awake like hell but she was thinking, or talking really and then processing what exactly her words meant. _What the hell was in that tea?_

Chuuya grows impatient as the seconds tick by and she stops all conversation. Though he knew the serum was temporary and faded just as fast as it began to work, he didn't think it was this temporary, especially as she was so close to giving him something useful.

" _Jacqueline_ ," he presses, with a stress on each of the syllables that he knows will set off alarms in her head, yet she still stares down into the cup in thought. Her eyebrows are knit together, and she wonders if she's on the verge of realizing just what was in her tea. He needs to act fast and readies another quick segway before she looks up, sad.

"There's no way he could know me, _right?_ " her uncertainty, for some reason, made him uncertain, and he furrows his own brows about to say a what to her question before she looks away and brings her nails up to her mouth. "I mean _me_ he doesn't know but what about Juno? I don't know what she did, she could have been around the city a lot she's not hard to miss she has pink hair for fucks sake and wears clothes with holes in it! She had to get on his bad side before, what if she said the wrong thing and stirred the wrong pot and raised a red flag or whatever, it's not like he wouldn't remember her face that's not in his character." she bites on the edges of her cuticles between words, and when it becomes too unsettling for him to watch Chuuya decides to reach out a hand to pull her own away from her face.

"You shouldn't do that it's bad for your nails—," he says during the gesture, but before he could come into contact with skin she swats his hand away.  
"Oh what do you know, you wear gloves, you probably fuck with those things on, fuck as in verb, meanwhile I'll never fuck as in verb because Dazai is going to kill me because Juno had absolutely no filter and poor fashion taste."

"I don't f—, hey, take it down a notch." he grabs the mug still balanced in her other hand instead while she continues to mutter about how she has a hit on her because Masamoto did something stupid because clearly if she crossed the Mafia she wasn't smart, which he couldn't argue with, but the way she swayed with her thoughts vomiting themselves out with an anxious aura really made something stand out for him: Quinn wasn't stupid, and if she was she wasn't the stupid of Masamoto.

Quinn begins to shake where she stands and continues on her rambles now talking about how if she had to secure her and the Mafia's safety then destroying Dazai along with the Armed Detective Agency was the only possible route no matter how attractive she keeps saying he was. "They're such good people, they don't deserve it, but if he won't leave me alone then they won't leave me alone, and they can't protect me like Mori or you can there's like four of them for fucks sake, fuck like the adjective not the verb—," Chuuya watches her spiral out from this back into a speech of the difference between her chosen superlative for the day in all its forms and tenses, and again a sly smile creeps onto the ends of his lips.

Mori was right: this girl is not Masamoto, but whoever she is she will be a lot more useful to them, and he's one step closer to finding out just exactly why.


	7. Quinn Hates the Mirror!

Though she began to get adjusted with the world around her Quinn would always come back to the body.

Her body.

She had a tough time thinking about it, though she never let it show. It was easy to change everyone's minds about who she was but her own? That was rough. Every time she passed a mirror she expected her plump self, adorable but not your average junior size. The only thing the body shared with her own self was the green in her eyes, but even those seemed foreign on an entirely new face. Her long hair still had shades of pink in it despite all the dye suggesting that Juno was naturally that type of anime character; her head was rounder, nose longer, but her thin-lipped mouth was wider which made her snore at night. Her body, especially, was slender, and though Quinn would wish for such as she would normally stare down at her own gut in the communal shower every morning she found herself missing the bodily elements that made her… _Her_.

Steadily, she began to put on weight.

It began as a conscious effort: larger lunches for a body that wasn't ready to contain them, more sugary drinks she would normally spit out. No one found it odd that she would only eat rice for every meal, a cultural bias she was glad for. Higuchi eventually found it endearing and would try to sneak bites of her lunches when they would sit across from each other at her desk, and though she always knew Quinn would fight her off for a bit because of her protection over food it slowly began to get more volatile. She never said anything and considered it stress from work, but one day she yelled.

"I have to eat it all!" Quinn screamed, holding her bowl over her head so the blonde couldn't reach any further. She yelled all the time but normally it was just for her to stop, small teasings like "you have your own lunch", but Higuchi realized this was not just protection of her lunch, this was possession.

Like she could see the others epiphany, Quinn looks away and brings her bowl down in front of her. She continues to eat, acting interested in a piece of paperwork that the other woman brought to talk with her, but she can feel her eyes watching her every move—her every bite.

"What do you mean 'eat it all'?" Higuchi asks, and there is no answer to her question. It's silent save for the quiet chewing of bites too big for her now large mouth. Quinn's swallow echoes and the other woman still watches her with her intense gaze.

"I'm probably not gonna have time for dinner tonight so I need to eat all my lunch. No biggie."  
Lie. She had two more beef bowls in her mini-fridge to be warmed up and eaten in the next four hours.

"I can drop something off for you, we're not busy."  
"Uh…"

Quinn debates on asking for more food. Bread? Cake? Something filling and most importantly fattening. She thinks of asking for a hamburger even but remembers the chaos of when she mentioned the monster to Akutagawa; for some reason, he was anti-beef patties.

"Quinn?"  
 _Shoot, she was silent too long._

"Yeah if you can that would be great." her mind wasn't entirely there, though, and instead readjusting the schedule at which she would have to eat her other packed meals. Maybe she'll have one in two hours, then whatever snack Higuchi would bring, then an hour after that the third bowl. She'll have to lower her water intake so she doesn't shit it all out when she gets home, it'll tire her out but she can handle it—she can make it up to herself later and drink water like crazy on the weekend to bloat. Or maybe that was a bad idea, and instead she should—.

"Quinn." Higuchi's voice acts as a top of a needle against a full balloon, popping the brunette out of her head. It's soft but carries a certain edge, like the needle. Quinn knows that voice: concern.

"Yes ma'am." her response is done in a joking manner but the conversation doesn't tilt that way.

"Your eating schedule is fucked up."

She didn't think it would _immediately_ tilt that way. Quinn stays silent, head down.

"Why aren't you eating?"  
"What are you talking about? You're seeing me eat right now."  
"Yeah and that's the only time I've seen you eat all day."  
"What are you—? This is the first time we've seen each other today."

"Look I know it's common for girls your age to be concerned about their weight but you don't have anything to worry about."  
"I'm not concerned about my weight—,"  
"Not eating is not going to help you get skinnier, it's only going to stress you out and leave you feeling worse off than if you were getting your meals in."

Quinn quietly laughs amidst the blonde's entrance into a tirade. The other continues to speak even as she says "That's not it." but clearly does not get the memo.

"You are a beautiful young woman, you do not need to be any thinner and you especially don't need that by putting your health at risk."  
"I'm not trying to get thinner."  
"I know, you're trying to eat, I see it, but eating once and then not eating—,"

"I'm trying to eat so I can get bigger!"

Higuchi finally shuts up at the rise of the voice in the younger's retort. It's silent again, no chewing interfering the sound. Thinking about the very act makes Quinn want to take another bite just to make the seconds count, but instead, she puts the bowl aside. She can't feign hunger anymore.

"I'm not used to being skinny." the words come out in pauses, Quinn trying to think her way through her own affliction and how to explain it without taking her friend down a rabbit hole she has no clearance to fall into. "I never knew what it was like to fit into a size smaller than a ten, and I thought… I thought that was something I wanted, something I needed to experience, because that's what the perfect body is, the perfect person…"

"You know overeating is just as bad as not eating at all."

She stares into her bowl. There are about three more bites left. She considers taking them right now in one go and finishing the meal, calling it a day, excusing the blonde from her office so she can forget the slightest ideas of food and continue her work until the next two hours past.

"You could work out instead, build muscle, get… 'Bigger' that way."  
It's not a bad idea, but she didn't miss the muscle. She missed the ways her thighs would jiggle next to each other on the stairs and spread when she sat to fill in the entire seat and connect at her waist that was the smallest part of her yet two of what she was now. She missed her arms that moved in the wind, that took up more space than a size large t-shirt sleeve would allow but were beautiful nonetheless. She missed her tits! God, how she missed the bosom that followed her from fourth grade on—but most of all she missed the warmth that would spread throughout her body within seconds of entering a cold room because all the disgusting fat was there to insulate her. Her body was like an attic in that way, built for shit and of shit, but she missed it nevertheless.

 _Why?_

"I've been here over a week and have eaten as much garbage as I can get my hands on. I've only put on three pounds." she couldn't believe the words that spilled from her mouth, normally she would want to punch someone who said that to her—oh boo hoo, I have a wicked metabolism. But now, boo hoo, she has a wicked metabolism.

"I'm really tired of not seeing me in the mirror."  
"No one sees themselves in the mirror." Higuchi, Quinn realizes, is no longer looking at her with concern but out the window, and she wonders if she's looking for her reflection in the oncoming evening of the falling sun. She looks away, careful not to find her own, but she thinks about what the woman says. Even when she sees herself with all her weight, her hips and dips, and rounded edges, there is still the feeling that the shapes she sees in the mirror aren't her. It's her body, it's what she's turned it into being alive all these years, but when she daydreams about buying mozzarella sticks she doesn't picture the same shape of hair that's on her head, or the same wide nose and thick lips. She's not exactly sure what she sees, really, and thinks about the _Bojack Horseman_ episode in which the mother's dementia turned their maid into a woman with an eternal moving squiggle on her face.

She looks out the window again, and beyond the buildings there is Juno's face, blank, staring back at her, yet when she pictures herself in Juno's body there is still a black cloud covering her face—squiggling lines.

Quinn realizes she will never look the way she does in her head, whatever that is. She turns away from the window again, tired of staring at a reflection she can't identify with.

"Do you want my last bites?" she pushes the bowl to Higuchi across from her who now stares at the insides the way she had done before. But she quickly pushes her chopsticks in and takes the final bites, and sweetly smiles like they didn't have any conversation at all.

* * *

 ** _AN AHEAD . . ._**

self love takes time, but it also takes recognizing that your "body goals" will never equate to happiness goals. it's taken me a long time to realize this and be comfortable with my pos afflicted self, but sometimes i still look back and miss the times i was ten pounds lighter. yet whenever i think of actually working and losing all this weight it's never me i imagine, because the person who does all that isn't me, right?

i don't mean to take you all down my own rabbit hole but i wanted to give a picture of a real identity crisis rooted in the body rather than personality or belonging. most of all i want to remind each and every one of my readers that you are beautiful no matter what you say, what others say, or what the world says against it. i mean, you're reading this, you gotta have good genes all around to make that judgment (insert sunglasses emoji here).

stay evenly temperatured (because HELLO SPRING !), stay safe, stay sassy—jackie


	8. Quinn Has Acid Reflex!

She brushed her teeth at night routinely now. Her roommate, Bella, would have been proud if they still shared the same space and late night conversations, but Bella would never know she adopted this new habit.

Quinn was coming on her second month in the world of _Stray Dogs_ which meant a lot of her habits had to change; one of those was over thinking about her other life and whether or not her body was running on autopilot as she was living some freaky-deeky version of _Four Corners_ , the other brushing her teeth before bed.

It wasn't that bad. She had a lot of work to do what with managing the budget and her boundaries, and it was interesting to observe the lives of those she primarily witnessed in the high-speed action of animation. For the most part, she was distracted from her mundane life except for considering tidbits of information she would share with Rita when she 'woke up', but since the tea incident with Chuuya and her binge eating episode only a week ago, Quinn thought a lot more about her prior student self. Mundane, sure, but she sort of missed it, from her mothers care packages and phone calls to shelving with Rita while finding new nonsense to discuss, there was an entire life that was built for her, and now she's not so sure she'll get to see it through.

So she picked up new habits, deciding that if she was going to complain about how foreign this world was in her physical form and beyond then she had to domesticate it. That involved waking an hour earlier than she normally would to make coffee and tea for whoever was situated outside her door that morning, in the process checking the weather for the day and turning on her tv to play the news as she dressed.

And brushing her teeth before she went to bed.

She was going through the last of this nightly routine and rinsing her mouth of the taste of toothpaste before she felt it; immediately, her head moved from her sink to her toilet as she let out a loud cough before the burning sensation of bile along her throat passed up and out, and the dinner she prided herself in making from scratch (microwaved) ended up as mush in her toilet like she was a mother penguin. Quinn signs against the toilet and slowly sinks to her knees while flushing the brown out of her sight. She can't remember the last time she threw up and felt this bad, even when she dished it out on the poor mafiosos shoes the day of her arrival she was still able to stand, but now Quinn felt sickly like her head couldn't be perched anywhere but the toilet for the night.

After a few seconds she managed to push herself back up to rinse her mouth and start brushing her teeth again, but while gargling the water at the back of her throat to coat the still singing feel she felt herself choke, and soon her head was back in her toilet as she spit the water out and gagged for what felt like forever. A hand went to claw at her throat, feeling something constricting her airway that she couldn't even swallow down, before she finally coughed one last time and dislodged whatever it was that was stuck in her throat. She waited now, catching her breath and gently passing her fingers along her neck to be sure nothing else was stuck in any of the folds of her skin before gagging into the toilet once more with a sigh.

She was ready to reach the handle to flush when she noticed something gleam in her toilet bowl that was neither bile nor the bowl itself. The gold was a stark contrast to the white porcelain and the water inside, and its shape reminded her of only one thing: a bullet.

* * *

The first person she called was Higuchi, and she didn't pick up until the third attempt. She couldn't blame her, though, none of them had real phones to be used for casual business; each of them had a burner with a series of numbers already programmed in it whose owners they were to commit to memory. If one needed to be changed, all of them needed to be changed, and though she never used the phone before she had it changed on her at least six times in her being there. That's why when the woman she called wouldn't pick up she was afraid she missed on a new switch until it finally clicked.

" _This better be an emergency._ "  
"Hi, how are you?"  
" _Emergency, Quinn._ " it was times like these she had to remind herself Higuchi's loyalty and focus was something she liked about her. She couldn't friendly _all_ the time.

"I um, I don't think I have Executive Nakahara's contact." he was the first one Quinn thought of when she saw the bullet floating in her toilet like a child's bath toy, mainly because he was there when she first threw up something hard and shiny and wondered if maybe he had the subordinate who cleaned up her stomachs mess make note of it. Unfortunately for her, the numbers programmed into her phone did not include anyone higher than the Black Lizard, so she had to start a game of phone tag.

" _I—…_ " Higuchi seems like she wants to know exactly what this is for, but still staring in her toilet, Quinn's just not sure if this is something she could share. " _If you don't have it what makes you think I have it?_ "

"Well, I mean you're higher than me so I thought, I dunno…" she begins to bite at her nails, the new slather of toothpaste she brushed with burning her open cuticles but of course she's too nervous to care.

" _And you really need it?_ "  
"It's definitely a…" she looks down at the bullet. "killing situation."

Higuchi didn't have the number but she directed her to someone who does.

" _What?_ " is the first thing Akutagawa says, and Quinn thinks she can feel his dead eyes through the phone.

"Hi," she still starts, a bit shaky as she's only talked to the man twice. He never seemed threatening though; he was too disinterested in her predicament to ponder killing her. "I was wondering if you had Chu—ah, Executive Nakahara's contact…?" her voice wavers, but he doesn't waste a breath to let out a curt " _why_ ". She swallows, debating between beating around the bush but realizing that could just get her dead in a bush.  
"I threw up a bullet?" she wasn't sure why she was unsure watching the golden oval make laps around the porcelain bowl, and when she opened her mouth to go on and explain she hears the line go dead. He hung up.

 _Great…_ With the thought, Quinn tosses the phone through the bathroom door, sure it hit the wall and ready to just flush the memory of this night down into the Yokohama sewage until she heard a ring.

Her phone never rung.

As it goes to a third she quickly launches herself at the wall to pick up the phone, out of breath and ready to say another polite hello before she's hit with the voice on the other side of the line.

" _You threw up a bullet and you didn't call me first?_ " there's an edge to Chuuya's voice on the other side of the line that she can't quite pick out with the static between them, but she's too focused on managing her breathing so she doesn't come across like a panting dog on her first received Port Mafia phone call.

"Well I didn't—," he mutters something in the middle of her own words stopping her short.

" _What does it look like?_ " he asks as he gets over the hump of whatever it was making him ' _tsk_ ' in nearly every moment of silence.

She quickly stands and makes her way back into the bathroom, peering into the toilet. "It's… Round?"  
" _And._ "  
"Gold?"

" _What does the inscription say?_ "  
"Inscription?" her brows are furrowed now and she can feel the tension they create in her skin from her forehead to the base of her brain.

" _At the back end of the bullet, what does it say?_ " he repeats in different words, and Quinn is still unsure what it is she's hearing him say.

"I—I don't know, it's just floating, I can't exactly see the back."  
He groans on the other end. " _Pick it up._ "

 _Like its a piece of poop?_ She doesn't say the words, instead she bites her tongue, tells him to hold on as she puts down the phone, and then rummages in her cabinets for a plastic bag to then dip her hand into the cold toilet and pick out the floating jewel. Quinn refrains from gagging when the water lightly touches her arm and she recoils to toss the bullet in the sink and audibly choke.

When she picks the phone back up, Chuuya sighs. " _Are you having fun?_ " he's patronizing, and she's too busy composing herself from upchucking air again to stop herself when she says "Tremendously." in a tone equal to his. He doesn't snicker or laugh like it's a joke, so quietly she apologizes and goes back to the bullet in the sink.

She rinses it off with the tap before touching it with her own hand, turning the pinky-sized item between her fingertips. It's lighter than she would expect, and she wonders how it manages to cause as much damage that high schools devote an entire assembly to its violence. The gold she considered it to be is more of a bronze, or maybe it just grew dull in her stomach acid. Thinking about it just sitting in her digestive track makes the organ churn, and she wonders if maybe she should have been checking her shit for the similar luster.

" _The inscription._ " he repeats it, again, and she finally turns it over so the butt of the bullet is against her thumb. She traces the skin against where a series of letters and numbers are etched in incredibly small font; at the center, there's a symbol. It feels like a pound sign, but it also seems like tallies. As she brings it closer to her eye she really can't tell which it is, only that there are lines in a specific perpendicular pattern.

"Uh, I think it's… Q one three seven, two K five six three." she mentally snorts—she was shot with a Q.

 _Hang on… Was she shot with a Q?_ Chuuya seems quiet on the other side aside from some rustling, like he's looking for something amongst a bunch of other somethings, and she considers it a good enough opportunity as any to ask the possibility, but as she hears irritated mutters about " _where the fuck is it_ " and how whoever handed him these files " _did a shit job_ " she votes against it.

Her hand closes around the bullet and she instead asks herself the question again. _Was she shot with the Q?_ Or rather, _was Juno shot with the Q?_

It would make sense as to why the bullet was lodged in her stomach. If she went off the theory that this was the second one to come out and play that meant that there was one more, waiting, or maybe it was flushed with her shit into the river. A traitor gets three shots to the chest, maybe the mafioso just missed a little.

 _No, that couldn't be…_ There's no way they would bag and sink a body that was still alive no matter what the chances were that they would still die in the deep blue. Juno had to have been confirmed dead in order for them to toss her body at sea, there was no way they missed. Chuuya had to have made sure of it.

 _So why were they suddenly not in her heart and swimming in her stomach?_

" _Hold on, what were the last numbers again?_ "  
"Five six three…" she's in a bit of a daze staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. In the past week alone she's been berated by her own thoughts of how disgustingly perfect Juno's body was, but as she leans closer to the glass she's daunted by the fact that its true: she is perfect, especially in her face, in her nose where Quinn could have sworn she felt the bone break and felt blood drip down her chin during that first interrogation. There was no scar tissue, though, and no trouble breathing through it. The bridge was completely healed, which seemed a bit inane for a structure like the nose in such short time.

" _Five six… Three…_ " Chuuya parrots, softly, like he's mulling something over. In this softer tone she considers bringing up her concerns with him but all thought process is brought to a halt as he suddenly hangs up leaving the line dead. No thank you, no goodbye.

Quinn closes the phone and drops it on the counter by the sink. With her now free hand, she brings a finger up to touch her nose. It's not sore, it's not bent, it's perfect. She stands back from the mirror, looking herself over and sighs.

A perfect nose for a perfect girl.

* * *

 ** _A/N AHEAD_**

 _10/10 do recommend the webtoon four corners, i started it when i was halfway done with the first chapter and it inspired me so much to actually post it and build on this concept. nana is my spirit human because i too like romantic walks to the fridge._

 _also, happy bsd friday to everyone *throws confetti* ! i'm so glad theyre starting with fifteen you have no idea, it's my favorite of the light novels because of its balance of chuuya content and the ways it goes into dazais character, and, you know, mori with his tea_

 _on a personal note i know i've updated a lot in this past week alone so i want to apologize about that because i have caught up to all my completed drafts buT on a lighter note i do have a central arc i know i want to take the story and (drumroll please) i have another five chapters after this planned out ! useless information, i know, but i'm on my bsd high longer than most and am writing for it and sleep and weep a lot more than i normally would in any other fandom. i'm gonna enjoy it while i can and i hope you all do too! fingers crossed for the next chapter to be released in a week_

 _stay warmish, stay safe, stay sassy_ _—jackie_


	9. Quinn Sees Juno!

Sometimes the weather makes the world look like an Instagram filter: just grey enough to be more than fifty percent saturated yet just bright enough that the exposure lets buildings stand out from the background.

Maybe thats why it was hard to notice the oddity of the situation, waking up in sheets a bit darker than the ones she fell asleep on and making her way to a cluttered sink to brush her teeth. Still, she rubbed her eyes slowly open and squeezed the tinted toothpaste out and onto a brush and into her mouth, yawning before she began to scrub. The mirror was just as grey as the rest of the day but through hazy eyes, she could see a pop of color—pink.

Quinn wanted to widen her eyes, to spit out the toothpaste and drop her toothbrush into the sink to gag at her reflection but her body refused. Still, she stood, swaying her toothbrush between her teeth, eyes unable to fully focus on what was in front of her.

She spits into the sink, and Quinn can't help but think of the mess of her stomach the night before.

The night before… _The night before?  
_ She's rinsing now, but her mind is nowhere near as hazy as her eyes continue to be. She fell asleep last night on white sheets but woke up on grey, walked out of a bathroom that was organized cleanly yet came back into one a completely jumbled mess, and most importantly saw tangled locks of a pastel pink instead of braided brunette.

A ring sounds from the other room and Juno sighs, closes her eyes for a few seconds, then heads towards the phone to pick it up. "Yeah?" her voice, though the same Quinn has become accustomed to when she speaks, is darker, gruffer, and holds a strength that is clearly disparate from the onlookers own " _um, hello?_ " that she shares from the doorway to Mori's office.

Juno speaks with someone she can't really hear about a conversation that muffles every other word. Maybe she's late for work, or maybe she's arguing against that fact, maybe maybe maybe. Quinn is just a little confused, _a lottle_ really; it's like another dream-turned-reality, except unlike before when her back was burned by the sun and felt the throb of her nose as blood pooled out there are pieces missing. She doesn't feel the fabric against her skin when Juno pulls on her clothes for the day, or hear the words she speaks on the many phone calls she gets before actually leaving her apartment. In fact, she doesn't even remember her leaving her apartment, and suddenly it's like the two are transported to the harbor. The sun, though clearly out and bright enough that Juno covers her eyes with her hand like a visor, doesn't blind the scene to Quinn; everything is still abnormally grey, a hazy memory turned dream.

If Quinn could sigh at not even being able to be in disbelief, she would.

"You're late."  
"Is that a complaint?"

Sauntering past whoever it is was that clearly had more authority than her, Juno began to get to work. It wasn't something her ripped jeans shouldn't have clearance for as she climbed around, on top of, and into freights on ships. Occasionally she would call out numbers, synonyms for damage that any of the shells housing products would have, or curses meant for her coworkers who would say something about her squatted out ass.

Still, it was all hazy. The words blended between the setting, and suddenly she went from coloring her hand in blue ink while sitting on a box of high fire artillery that morning to breaking a shot glass over the head of a mafioso in a bar in the night. She was a spitfire, but the longer the haze went on the less sporadic she seemed to be. If Quinn heard anything about her Masamoto counterpart it was that she was uncontrollable and prone to roughhousing, but ultimately inexplicable in her tendencies. As the moments blended together there seemed to be nothing out of character about her; she followed the same morning routine of waking too close to her working hours that she was late every day, she yelled at the same men who would make lewd comments about her outfit of choice, then continue to idly color the palms of her hands on what she assumed was her break before trashing herself in a downtown bar to start the cycle again.

It was hard to imagine her as a threat when she was inebriated to the point that her life had no other time for activities. Maybe that's why the days blended together and the nights even more so, until there was the oddest clarity.

Juno sat coloring her hand with an orange highlighter now, hair up in an awfully messy bun and legs wrapped together in a leather skirt unfit for her shipping occupation. Around her, someone was barking orders that she clearly ignored up until someone took the marker out of her hand.

"Do you have ears, Masamoto?" a voice asked, and she scoffs while holding up her hand.

"Do you want this on your face?" the insinuation in her response earns a smirk, and the man she sees in front of her leans down a bit and grabs her wrist in the process. The closer he gets to her, however, she hums. "Watch it," she coos "we're in public Nichi."

"Oh? If we're in public why are you calling me that."

The name is completely foreign to Quinn, but to Juno, it seems like a sense of warmth as the two steal a kiss behind a passing crate. When he pulls away he touches her thumb on the inside of her palm and orange ink spreads on his pale skin. "Is this really productive?" he asks, but it's not a question of authority. It's curiosity, and it makes Juno laugh a bit before putting it down onto the crate she's seated on, presumably staining it just as much as his thumb.

"It gets the job done."  
"Oh, we're talking about you now?"  
"Watch it…"

It's his turn to laugh, and a clipboard shows up in his hands as he writes something down. She asks him what it was he was yelling at her for that she just couldn't hear, and when he comments that she just plainly ignored him she shakes her head. "Must've been in the zone or something…" her words trail again but this time it's not to insinuate any power or stress on any syllable of servitude. Again, this Nichi steps closer to her and pressed the back of his hand on her forehead.

"Have you been sleeping well?" he asks plainly, but with the connotation of a doctor that knows the answer. Still, she shakes her head to provide one. "You need to stop going out. It's drawing attention to you." he adds, but she turns away from his hand with a wave of her hand, her eyesight now on the orange handprint at the corner of the crate.

"Please, nothing draws attention to me." Juno seems too earnest in her words, and where Quinn would get a subconscious concern for her, Nichi instead smiles like that's a fact he takes pride in; like a girl with the brightest pink hair who wears the trashiest of clothes both on the job and off still being someone no one pays particular mind to is what draws him to her.

As a response, he leaves a near chaste kiss on her cheek, and she pretends to wipe the spot where his lips were with the sleeve of her shirt muttering a small "ack". He laughs, quietly, before handing her the clipboard in his hands.

"Do one last run-through sleeping beauty."  
She sticks out her tongue, standing from the crate. "Sleeping beauty?" she asks, but he's already turned around and is waving her off.

"And Masamoto, that skirt isn't safe for work!" he calls out in a closing, and like any insecurity from before vanished her lips curl into a smirk.

"Yeah well I can see the outline of your dick in those pants, Hoshi!" her response is yelled across the ship, and though many turn to both her and her boss to get a look she couldn't seem to care, only giggle at the bird he gives her shrinking further away from her view.

As the scene hazes over again she feels the other girls calm despite her wired routine, and for the first time in a long time, she graciously and comfortably begins to fall back asleep.


	10. Quinn Goes to the Front Lines!

It's night when she wakes up. The moonlight comes through her window in dark shadows making silhouettes on the bed by her feet. This she could tell by the cold that would seep through the fabric like she was exposed, but it was odd to feel it by her feet and not her face where the window was by her bed.

She waits before leaning up or opening her eyes and decides to see what she can tell about the new room she's in. The bed feels familiar, at least it seems to be a bed with sheets and a comforter wrapped all too tight around her small frame, and the oddly clean yet musty stench she's engulfed in brings her back to her first reawakening.  
The dead bosses room.

It all makes sense now as she tiredly blinks her eyes open. Dark shadows dance in her vision but she can tell there are machines to her right likely attached to her body in some way, and the large windows are in front of her with their multitude of shapes; the treeline that was so serene in daylight still the same in the dark even if she's in an undisclosed location.

There is no one else in the room with her, she notices as she sits up, stretches her arms, yawns and rubs her eyes clean. Even when she detaches herself from the machinery there are no sounds indicating people are present or that they were notified of her awakening. It makes sense; even if it's been seven years there are always people waiting to start a coup in any way possible. One look at the stained wall panel was all the fuel the fire needed. Quinn keeps this in mind when exiting the room, closing the door behind her to be sure no one else could see in and enter. When she steps out and it's still silent though, she begins to worry.

"Hello?" she hoarsely calls out into the old house, not surprised at the itch the action makes at the back of her throat; it's common for her to wake up a little scratchy, and that's all it was to her as she continued to delicately step around the dusted floors, barefoot. "Hello?" when she repeats the phrase there's a sudden thump of footsteps echoing in the old wood before someone finally appears in the corner of the hall. Gratefully, she sighs, recognizing the mafioso whose head peeks out and ridding herself of the tension that built in her back.

"Ms. Quinn, I'm glad you finally awoke." Hirostu is as formal as even in his continued attempt to use her nickname, and in response, she gently bows her head—not before raising an eyebrow as she brings it back up.

"Finally?"  
"Well, it has been over a week."

Quinn wants to say "that's not possible", but decides that she really was in no place to discern what's possible anymore. _Was she really stuck in Juno's memories for a week?_

"I'm sorry to create this… Mess…" she decides to say, trying to think back to the last time it was her mind she was stuck in, the last time she was in absolute control. In all honesty, she felt like it was just a day ago, eight hours of comfortable sleep interrupted by a sudden coldness of her toes.

"Frankly there is a more pressing mess than you right now. The boss had you brought here after we were attacked by an enemy organization a few days ago. He wanted you to be safe, given your condition."

"My condition—? Wait, enemy organization?" finally getting the sense that this body has been at rest for a long period of time, she begins to feel jittered, and instead of hopping between feet she instead brings her right foot on top of the left, balancing though focusing on the skin contact to subdue any other senses.

 _What enemy organization?_ If her timeline was right, and for the past months it seemed to be damn right, they were way past any harsh battles with the Guild though still in some limbo before cannibalism. An oddly long limbo, yes, but one nonetheless.

Hirotsu sighs like he doesn't want to continue this conversation any longer, but out of some sort of obligation he turns and gestures for her to follow him down the hall and into another room. When she follows, hesitantly, she finds a control room of sorts. It's small, with a single computer tucked into the corner of a desk and a communicator standing beside it, but being the only pieces in the room that lack any dust makes Quinn think Hirotsu has been sitting here for far too long staring into the screen and speaking into the communicator.

"The Guild managed to get a hold of one of ours and used his ability as a weapon throughout Yokohama. Mr. Mori somehow managed to get caught in the crossfire and is hiding out nursing an injury while Executive Nakahara takes on acting boss. Mori's last request, however, was for him to head to the front lines… And for me to give you all this information should you wake up." there's an edge to the man's last words, but Quinn can't think to find it wrapping her head around all that's happening. The first part made sense; she can place herself into the scene of the unfortunate torture the mafioso Hirotsu has mentioned and how that began to directly translate onto the Yokohama landscape (also likely being why she was moved to her current location and not left near public access). It's the latter lines that she almost asks him to repeat but instead takes a deep breath.

Mori was never injured as a result of the Q incident. In fact, the man is never injured, which makes her consider the limbo to cannibalism is reaching its end and Chuuya becoming the acting boss in his place was just the cherry on top. But it's a Guild conflict, and for Mori to still be giving orders amidst all of this, and those including her? She's not sure what to think, at all.

"Where was he sent?"  
"The bosses location I cannot divulge."  
"No, Nakahara."

"Executive Nakahara was sent to retrieve our man but…" as if he could see the wheels of her mind churning in her head, Hirotsu looks away. "I was ordered to make sure you remain here, _safe_." he adds the last word with an emphasis, and Quinn can nearly picture Mori stating the word in the context of protecting his prized revival gem.

"Here as in…?" as she trails off he doesn't give an answer, and now she's not sure if that was part of his orders or his own paternal decision. "Right…" she mutters, slowly backing out of the room and loudly announcing that she was going to look around. She doesn't take the chance to find out if he believed her because immediately she slips out of the doorway in search for what could be a front door. When she finds it she slips out of that too.

 _Poor parenting_ , is all she can think as she begins to run. In what direction, she doesn't know, but her feet seemed to know exactly where to go against the solid earth taking her deeper and deeper into the treeline she was staring at not long before. There is no chase and no one calling her name, in fact, there's no noise in the depth of whatever forest she was in save for her own heavy breaths and her arms that push away shrubbery. If she were in her real body, Quinn would have passed out on the floor by now with no hope to continue the course, but she has the boundless energy of countless nights of sleep strapped into an already agile frame. Her stamina is unimaginable, and when she nearly jumps into the middle of a sudden road with oncoming traffic she wants to trip at the sight of something so different so quickly.

She settles for stepping back from oncoming traffic instead with a loud yelp, but still the car stops with a screech of tires and the driver steps out.

"Miss, are you okay?" they ask, and actually finally catching her breath she merely shakes her head spouting out random words she can't even place. "Did you come from up there?" they follow up with an outstretched arm, and just as she turns to follow its line of sight a loud boom shakes the entire cliff they're on. It's only now she realizes they're even on a cliff, a roadway so close to falling off on its own without two people standing with it.

"You need to go." she tells the good samaritan that begins to ask questions regarding just what was going on, but Quinn merely puts a hand on their shoulder and leads them back to their car, responding to any questions with reaffirmations that it would just be better if they left as soon as possible. Watching them drive away, Quinn feels the land shake around her again, and looking back to the grassland at the top of the hill she sees a plethora of glowing lights; blues, greens, but above all, red.

Chuuya's name is at the tip of her tongue as she heads back into the foliage in disbelief that she could even be that close in the first place. It must be a fluke like a glitch in the Matrix, but it's one she's glad for as her feet continue to run. In dirt, over trees, and even skirting around debris as the shakes continue to get worse. Her mind even runs considering all the worst: that Dazai isn't with him and one wrong move would kill him, that Dazai _is_ with him and would turn away this time and watch him go bezerk until his body gave out, that Chuuya would just _die_.

She stopped when she saw the hat, nearly tripping into the dirt at the sight. It dangled off of a low tree branch, and it was almost unrecognizable as the top was dented in and the sides were nearly crushed like it landed on the tree with force. She didn't have to climb too far to get it, or maybe she did; all she knew was that it was Chuuya's, and still she had this feeling in the pit of her stomach that he wouldn't get it back.

When the thought passed through she could hear the laugh, and like a sudden clearing appeared before her she stared at a fallen body and the victor standing before him. But there was no pride in the cackle that escaped their lips.

If she only took a quick glance she would have assumed the frame was still the executives entirely, standing victorious as he always would—but if the dirtied clothes and wayward hair weren't enough to be off putting, the crimson that lit his skin crawling from his bare arms to the tops of his neck was. He stood still for a few seconds, shrunken pupils staring nowhere in particular, a cackling laugh echoing into the open space as an arm raises and a vast darkness appears in his hands. The black hole is then thrown down, and the ground shakes beneath Quinn nearly making her loose her balance and fall.

A small yelp escapes as she grounds her bare feet, but it only attracts the attention of the corrupted form in front of her. For a second the now white eyes meet hers, and even more than the sight of the body alone is enough to freeze her in her place. She's his target now, and with every step closer he throws another black hole into the earth making the ground shake as it caves in on itself. Quinn isn't sure where to go, whether running is worth it, and as he raises another hand ready to tear another hole into the earth the laugh nearly pierces her ears until a soft voice could be heard and the grounds are quiet again.

"It's time to take a break." _Dazai—!_

Looking up it is indeed the agency member clutching Chuuya's wrist, and in a nearly blinding light brighter than the black of the holes that were tossed around like dodgeballs Chuuya's body reverts. Quinn blinks a couple times, in part from the light still singing her eyes and in part from seeing her number one ship interact just feet away, before she sees the red gone from his skin. Chuuya is on his knees now, likely telling Dazai that he should have stopped him earlier and that he should bring him to the drop point, and when Dazai bends to reach his fallen height Quinn's heart picks up pace.

She's not afraid anymore and is likely completely irrational feeling this much devotion to the partnership in front of her, but she really can't help herself. Against the odds of whatever it was that changed there is still this consistency, still them working together with some whacked-out and dismembered respect and belief in one anothers abilities. It's surreal, but it's also so real.

Quinn would also die for Soukoku no matter how short her exposure. When Chuuya reaches a shaky arm to punch Dazai's own, she could swear she heard herself squeak at the mere memory of Dazai's smile at this. _Mother-fucking canon_.

Dazai is smiling at Chuuya's now fallen body when she steps nearer, fingers pressing at the dented portions of the hat she nearly forgot was gripped in her hands to give it back its shape. She makes no move to look at the agency member when she kneels and places the hat at the center of the fallen mans chest, and when his tired fingers grab onto the edges Dazai laughs. Quinn feels her eye twitch; she's been found out.

"Aren't you full of surprises, elevator girl." Dazai's words are a whisper but nonetheless smooth, and instead of looking at whatever expression he's currently making she stares at the rise and fall of Chuuya's hat on his chest, still consumed with the need to confirm his longevity. "I guess I really am right to not trust banks." he adds, and without moving her head her eyes flicker to meet his.

His expression is still, almost like he's waiting for something more than a movement of sight, so she slightly narrows her eyes. He says nothing. She says nothing. Back her eyes went to the sleeping ginger between them.

"Thank you." her voice is hoarse again like she finally woke up—something that wouldn't be surprising as anyone with a conscious wouldn't run out of a cabin in the woods to go towards the source of an earthquake. Dazai hums a bit at this, maybe as a question or maybe just out of surprise so she adds "For Chuuya." When she looks back at him, he's frowning.

"What's Chibi to you?" he asks, and though the use of the nickname makes the shipper in her do somersaults she takes the beat to frown herself. She opens her mouth to reply but stops as he stands, partially since he decided the conversation was over and partially in an attempt to refrain from sharing any information. The act makes her look guilty, and lightly he laughs again. "Let me take care of the Guild for you, elevator girl." he turns his back as he speaks, and watching him saunter to what looked like an injured Steinbeck she finally looks around the rest of the area.

The grassland and tree-line of the forest is destroyed with trunks fallen everywhere and dirt upchucked from the ground, and once she stands from the sleeping body Quinn can see craters formed likely from a combination of corruption's own doing and Chuuya himself weighting bodies against the ground. Aside from Dazai talking to the rather impressed Guild member a few feet from her (and oddly so much in their own world) there is no one else alive and well in the area—until she notices a quiet sob amongst the wind.

She turns to the sound, and seated in front of the house wrapped around an oversized jacket that was assumed to be Chuuya's is Q. Evil, malignant, sobbing Q.

Quinn doesn't hesitate to walk towards the child and kneel before him, unseen with his eyes closed as tears slowly drop from the sides visible in the falling moonlight. Gently, she traces a thumb against the skin of his cheek where it fell to wipe it off, but at the contact, his eyes dart open and his body tenses. His eyes are menacing to look at, likely to paint warning signs in peoples heads that say unnatural and demonic, but even with the moon and star pupil's that glow brighter than the full moon she can tell how sad they are, but more importantly how tired.

Slowly, she retracts her hand and holds both of them up so her empty palms are facing him. "I'm not going to hurt you." Q merely blinks at the words, like he's heard them time and time before only for someone to lie, but now he's really thinking about it. As an odd peace offering, Quinn brings her hand down and extends one pinky out between them. "I promise." she adds, and though Q doesn't reach out he stares at the outstretched finger, and his shoulders noticeably loosen—but they drop, his posture as sad as his eyes.

"He said God doesn't love me…" his voice doesn't shake, and each word sounds as clear as if he's repeating it to her less out of remembering the pain and more as a statement of truth. She bites the inside of her cheek, considering she was never good with kids, but Q isn't exactly a kid.

"God is a horrible father," she begins, and his frown is more pronounced at the words. "he doesn't know how to love all his creations equally, sometimes at all."

The night is still for a while, no breeze and no sounds rise before she hears a sob again; Q, with tears in his eyes, begins to scream as the drops fall on his cheeks, and Quinn makes no move to reach out and stop him. She sits, as still as the night, until he leans forward to bury his tear-stricken face in her chest. Then she wraps her arms around him, then she holds him as he cries, and then she thinks of Juno who just wanted to be seen.

* * *

It's not hard to place the cold of an LED light, or maybe that's just him. It's not like he was in the medical floors that often, but when he was he was always forced to stay miserably still beneath a bright light that would creep beneath his eyelids, a bright cool white.

Chuuya attempts to breathe. Breathing is always the hardest after Corruption, but so is moving, standing, any physical activity seems far fetched once he gives way for the demon in his body to play. It's infuriating, demeaning, but sometimes it just has to be done. Soon he opens his eyes and stares at the light ahead; every even breath makes his muscles yearn for him to stop, but he won't listen.

"How are you feeling?" a voice colder than the lights sends a chill up his arm, but it's not frightening at all. Slowly he sits up from the raised cot he lied in, taking in the frays of his dress shirt that are stained with blood and the dirt clinging to his pants before meeting Mori seated across the room, not exactly focused on Chuuya in the bed as his eyes are out the large window to his right open to a room just across the hall. He doesn't respond, but feels his neck ache with the motion of a nod.

"She's quite something, isn't she?" Mori delicately grins as he stares into the other room, and Chuuya's eyes meet the same subject. Inside sits Q on his own cot with wounds on his arms being treated and bandaged by doctors who seem to shake at every instance they come into contact with him, but seated next to the child is the problem the executive has been trying to solve for the last few months. Quinn's hand is interwound with Q's, though it looks like he holds on tighter at every instance something comes in contact with his skin. Disinfectant, stitches, each make him twitch though it's more because of who they're coming from. They can't hear anything from where they are, but he notices Quinn's mouth move as though she's talking both the doctors and Q down.

"When you didn't make it back to the drop point we decided to send someone to the hill, and there she was. Hirotsu said she ran out of the safe house as soon as he mentioned your name, though what's more interesting was the way she ordered our men to get medical for you. She mentioned corruption by name, I assume that's why they listened to her when she made them bring Q to be treated rather than tried."

Mori goes on to mention the short reunion he had with the girl while Chuuya was still unconscious; her worry at his arm tucked away in a sling and parade of questions as to how he was injured was something he wasn't concerned about until she said the words "That's not what happened", and in a strange power-play he allowed her, she only agreed to tell him everything as long as he let the child that refused to let go of her heal and never demand his power again.

He adds something about her use being beyond numbers, about her being more useful than her predecessor miming what he's said before only with more intent, but Chuuya's fogged focus is still on Quinn across the way. Though she herself was unconscious for a little over a week she didn't look anything like it; her green eyes were still wide without even the slightest dark spot under them as she watched the doctors and everything they did. When they wrap the rest of the child's wrist up they seem to say something to her, but her face is confused even as they point down to what he assumed was her feet. She probably had her own wounds if she really did run like Hirotsu suggested, but when one of the doctors picks up the foot and wipes off thick brown that was likely caked blood and dirt there's nothing on her skin. It's not even the slightest bit red.

* * *

 ** _A/N AHEAD_**

happy ten chapters ! (insert party emojis here of all softwares alike)  
this chapter almost didn't get done because i kept revising it. damn i still itch a bit wanting to revert some things but cest la vie.

honestly i don't think i've ever kept with a fic this long that wasn't a scene-by-scene oc follow along type of thing this is a real milestone for me and i am so thankful for everyone that keeps following, favoriting, viewing, accidentally hitting on the title and then quickly going back to your search results, the whole shebang, or reading from a bookmark like i used to do. aint nobody as dope as u.

on another note, i have a question(ish) for all my lovely readers—

i'm trying to stray away from making this story ship centered but i am so in love with chuuya nakahara it is suffocating at this point and i am funneling all that affection through quinn (which i know i have already done a lot in what ive posted so far but listen i have twenty five files in my sleep and weep folder and only fifteen of those are concrete chapters to post i am restraining myself as much as i can and am trying to focus on their partnership but lets get real who in this world doesn't want to fuck chuuya?) but i don't necessarily want to add said funneling to this main sleep and weep verse, so i guess my question is would anyone be interested if i made a collection on ao3 to post them to?  
the thing is i wanted to keep all oc things here, and while i can alter some of the chapters to be chuuyaxreader vs chuuyaxoc some are so specific to quinns situation that i really cant unless i change the material entirely.  
i'm just thinking about it now because a) i like to give you guys content, and i feel bad when i dont (coughcough black paladins and stillborns coughcough) so if i have the written doc i want to do something with it rather than leave it to collect dust and b) i've really worked out an arc to focus on from here and possibly finish with but theres a lot i still think about for quinn in tandem with it and am not sure how to shove it in but yearn for some organization  
the best example to explain this would be the yakuza verse set up by writingfromtheshadows' soukoku fic "where your loyalties lie". they have the main story and also extra companions that arent required reading but are fun (and smutty). also in general go read that fic my life has been changed forever and i still have three chapters left.

if you could drop a comment or a pm about what you think or where your interests lie that would be super helpful! yeah, sure, i write this for me, but knowing y'all come out and read every chapter means so much and i want to be able to continue to provide when i can.

insert spaceballs "smoke if you gottem" gif here  
stay cool (its SPRING BITCHES!), stay safe, stay sassy—jackie


	11. SPECIAL: Chuuya Birthday

**_AN AHEAD_**

 _i wrote this instead of doing my final, you know, as one does._

 _happy birthday to my favorite ginger, chuuya nakahara. i love you three thousand._

 _** this chapter is absolutely not sequential from the last; a double post from A03 **_

* * *

 _"_ _SURPRISE!"_

The crowd yelled but she screamed louder, and everything in her hands fell as they balled themselves into fists ready to attack whoever it was on the other side of the door until she heard a loud sigh.

"It's not him." a memorable voice says from far into the room, and though Quinn still stands with her hands in fists well ready to thrash someones skull in the wall, Mai Sakurai and her plethora of minions turned away from the scene sitting back in spots all over the apartment.

Quinn's eye twitches at the scene before her. People, despite their best attempts to hide, littered the inside of the apartment—the apartment that belonged to Port Mafia executive Chuuya Nakahara.

It was nearing the end of the month for April and that meant two things: Quinn had to restructure the budget as best as she could, and a particular executive was having a birthday. Being that she found a way to bring the mafias expenditures down by another few percent it seemed like the end to a good month, but seeing as that was by bringing down the aging executives second paycheck meant for exorbitant wines and the fridges that store them meant that it was a rocky season. Lucky for her she's been working with Chuuya enough lately to make the proper peace offerings in order to get him to sign off on her plan. The homemade cheesecake and yet another exorbitantly priced bottle of dead grapes was meant to do the trick before it ended up on his doormat at her entrance. The shattered glass, of course, she could handle. The growing stain of red on his marble floors, not so much.

"What the hell are you guys doing here?" Quinn asks rushing into the kitchen to grab as many towels as possible. Mai sighs following suit, but with less enthusiasm or worry.

"Giving your boyfriend the party he deserves. Did you really think fancy loner-time was going to cut it?" as she says the words the bleach blonde head gestures towards the remnants of the wine bottle of the floor they're currently cleaning up. Quinn flusters a bit at Mai's choice of the b-word like she always does; it's hard to force herself back into the lie when she's grown so accustomed to the truth again. Kouyou says it's her biggest weakness, her biggest fault, the exact reason she should stay in an office. Mopping up the wine that was meant for a completely different job, she thinks the executive is exactly right.

"Mai please, if he sees all these people here he'll—,"  
"Smile for once? Give Ikuro the high five he's always wanted?"  
Quinn wants to say "kill you" but it is in ill taste for the crowd in the room.

"Who even are all these people?" she asks as they manage to wipe all the red off the floors and save the fallen cake thanks to its box. While Mai begins to list off names, places and pronouns galore Quinn begins to tune her out and instead uses the time to think. If she makes an excuse to leave she can pull the buildings fire alarm and get them charging out like ants before Chuuya would even realize they were there and save her May budget. Or maybe she could call Higuchi to make a fake emergency and stall him returning for the night—no, then he'd just be upset and never listen to anything she had to say. Quinn sighs as she keeps running through ideas that were all likely to fail until she feels a rough nudge on her side.

"Earth to Eriko." _right, the fake name_.  
"Sorry I'm just _really_ worried." Quinn puts a stress on the last words, but being the spoiled brat she is Mai merely pats her on the back and walks away to criticize someone on their stance behind the couch.

Quinn tucks her head into the sink to keep her eyes away from the chaotic picture before her, watching the red flow through the wine-stained towels under the running water. Its reasons like this Chuuya hates the little charade Mori created for them, the spontaneity of rich girls that bleeds outside of Quinn's designated work hours and into his life. Time and time again she manages to talk him down and remind him what it is they're working towards but this is a new level—this is his _home_. The moment he walks in he'll have them all kicked out and probably have a report ready to get her demoted with details of her shortcomings by the time the sun rises. Quinn's hands clutch the sides of the sink at the thought, and the red in the water makes her feel sick.

But, she hates working at a desk, and she's not about to spend the rest of her time in this dreamworld at one.

She'll just have to convince Chuuya this is the best god damn birthday he will ever have.

* * *

There's a knot in his shoulder that he just can't get rid of. The entire day, through meetings, elevator rides, and even conversations with subordinates he reached his arm over his chest to cradle the spot and press at it with all types of pressure at his fingertips. Slices of a birthday cake at meetings, no matter how relaxing, couldn't do the trick either, and though it was supposed to be "his day" he couldn't help that the knot was stealing the show.

Reaching an arm out to open his front door, Chuuya tries a trick with his thumb against the lump but still no luck, and when he opens the door with an exhale he's ready to open the special bottle he took out of storage and fall asleep at his kitchen counter until yells fill his head at every octave.

 _"_ _SURPRISE!"_ voices yell, and for a while that's all they are like a white noise that just isn't his forte, until he sees bodies pop up from behind all kinds of furniture. They all look around his age, some maybe younger, and at the center rising from his couch are three of the most irksome figures he could recognize at the moments notice.

Chuuya immediately takes a step back and shuts the door, and while he stands in the dimly lit hallway he leans his forehead against his front door. The pain in his shoulder worsens; Quinn has a tendency to do that to him.

When he steps back in again and closes the door behind him, everyone stands in silence watching him enter again, and when his eyes make his way to where the three icky figures stood before he only notices two. Before he could furrow his eyebrows he feels small hands wrap themselves around his arm, and he turns to see Quinn at his side with a smile that's reserved for the feigned love for another.

Chuuya's not sure how it happens, but with the simple touch of her hand at his arm and the fondness of her green eyes looking at him the knot disappears.

"Looks like we surprised him!" she says loud enough to the crowd who then cheers as loud as their surprise. In the flurry of noise she turns to him and leans up in a gesture that would look like a kiss on the cheek to everyone else, but her lips just stop close enough at his ear in a poor apology.

"How the hell did they get in?" he hisses low enough mirroring her own false display of affection.  
"Mai bribed the doorman."  
"Remind me to take away his key."

Quinn steps back with a nearly scared expression, and now holding onto the arm that was still latched to him he could feel her pulse quicken, but with the way her eyes looked anywhere but him Chuuya bet it was a preemptive worry to whatever it was she was about to ask him.

"I need two hours." she says, fingers fidgeting against his jacket clearly itching to rip at the skin in uncertainty as she always does.  
"What could Sakurai possibly have for you here, _now_?"  
"A way to get me into her fathers corporate office with a legitimate cover."

Chuuya stops his words in their tracks and instead deeply inhales, looking back up of the group of students that filled his home. They were already getting accustomed to the set up, people pouring hard liquor brought by another misfit and blasting music that was all going to give him a headache in seconds time. He would get a lot of joy from making sure they all landed on their asses when he threw them out, physically, but he would also feel the same way if Quinn finally solved their shipping crisis getting another long term job off his hands. He looks back down at her and she's watching him with careful eyes; the knot in his shoulder returned.

"You have one." he holds up a finger for emphasis, and though she sighs as she lets go of him he can't help but notice the excited spark in the lights of her eyes that tug her lips up into a grin. If Quinn was going all out, he definitely needs a drink.

* * *

Seven hours later Quinn sits on the carpet in front of the couch attempting to keep a burp in by any means necessary. Her throat tingles, her body sways, and even her head begins to hurt before she gives up and lets it loose. Near the end, she coughs, but the sound is drowned out by laughter from behind her.

"Kouyou would be _so_ disappointed." Chuuya's voice is soft from his sprawled position on the couch, partially from the teen cocktails that kept being put in his hand by both himself and everyone else who wished him a happy birthday, and part from his body's likely cry for him to finally fall asleep. She likes it, the wistful sound coupled with a laugh that she could feel from where her back touched the couch cushions. It feels the equivalent to eating a freshly baked cookie, a blend of textures that makes you feel warm inside.

These are thoughts she should not be having.

"I am the literal and physical embodiment of Kouyou's disappointment." she responds with a small laugh, hands picking at frays in the carpet likely caused by the tracks of feet that came through earlier in the night.

Mai kept insisting that Chuuya _needed_ this, that a surprise party was exactly what someone his age wants but is too afraid to ask. Actually knowing him beyond the subtext of a fake friends false but totally convincing long term lover convinced Quinn that that was not the truth, so she told her tens of thousands of times what a bad idea it was. But Mai, ever the headstrong woman, decided to throw the party herself anyway, and though Quinn found a way to make the interruption worth both her and Chuuya's time the entire night she looked over her shoulder to be sure he wasn't crushing someone from across the room who even looked at him in the wrong way. She expected everything to explode by the end of the first hour, but when she found him after her time was supposedly up he was a whole different Chuuya; the layers of his suit were stripped away along with his hat leaving him in his now untucked dress shirt playing (and winning) a plethora of drinking games with people who had a fraction of the brain cells he did. The image fit her prototype of a frat boy, and it was odd if not concerning to see him in that context, until she saw how far his smile was.

Chuuya grins often, usually the result of or in passing between coy smirks, but sitting like a youth king between all these people gave him a smile she wasn't sure she's actually seen ever. At first she thought it was just from him being the best and the birthday boy, but watching him with people his own age that weren't trying to kill him or kiss his ass reminded her how little normalcy like this he had in his life. The man wears a three piece suit on a daily basis for fucks sake.

Everyone left about an hour ago (she thinks, ultimately unsure of how time works anymore) leaving Chuuya and herself to clean up the mess she caused—which really meant herself, but her five minute sober-up preparation break turned into something a lot longer, and now Quinn feels like she might fall asleep.

"For my birthday Quinn got me a hangover…" his voice sways in the room again, and smiling she tilts her head back in an attempt to face him. It gives her vertigo more than anything, and as she brings her head back up to rubs her eyes she laughs.

"I actually had a wonderful gift for you." she replies, turning her body so she could see where his head was propped against the couch armrest. At the thought, he raises an eyebrow with a small hum.

"A coupon book?" his expression is serious but dubious enough to make her laugh. "A life insurance policy?"

"No, it was actually something very thoughtful."  
"A handbook to the worlds most strenuous kinks?"  
"No, but was that on your wishlist?"  
"It should be."

It's her turn to hum now, leaning her head against the couch close enough to his knee that he lightly knocks the bone against her hair as if to validate that he will allow the presence.

"I spent twenty-four hundred on a bottle of fermented grape juice that's now shattered to pieces and made you a Manhattan style cheesecake from scratch."  
"Wow you really hate wine culture—wait, cheesecake?"  
" _From scratch_ , yes, but I think someone ate it."

"So for _my_ birthday, you made me the cake _you_ insist on me trying?" his voice sounds like a grin in the making, and as to hide the heat that rises in her cheeks from embarrassment she buries her face in the cushions. He knocks his knee against her head again, and instead of rising she whines. He laughs again, but it's soft and short before she hears it turn into a hiss. When she raises her head from the couch she sees him seated in an upright position, head ducked and eyes closed as his arm is over his shoulder reaching for something at his back.

Quinn doesn't even remember her body doing it but soon she's gotten up from her seat on the floor to fill the space behind Chuuya on the couch, her hands pushing aside his hair and fingers tracing down his neck to the spot on his back he's currently trying to reach through his shirt. She can feel it, the ball in his back that could be another bone if it didn't make him slightly twitch as she pushed it in with her thumb.

"Take off your shirt." she commands, already pushing the collar down as much as she could.  
"I thought I was the daddy?" she could hear the raised eyebrow meant to mock her in his voice, so she flicks the spot on his back. The sudden action made him groan as his back recoiled from her, and she repeated "off" for him he slowly obliged.

Knowing she would get distracted if she didn't, Quinn keeps her eye on the spot by his shoulder. Even in on his bare skin she can notice the slight lump and the discoloring around it likely from his constant attempts through the day to wear it away. Lightly, she traces her fingers over it again before bringing both of her thumbs at its center.

"When I start to press in, you're going to increase the pressure as you need it." Chuuya doesn't immediately respond, likely because she was asking him to do the one thing she repeatedly asked him _not_ to do; she hates that suffocating feeling of being unnaturally still, and he played that trick too many times with her on separate occasions to convince her otherwise. "It's okay." she adds, and at the word he sucks in a breath that straightened his posture.

Slowly she presses her thumbs into the knot at his back. At the tough she sees his frame glow a light red and soon her fingertips follow. At first she can't notice it and begins to push her thumbs apart to the ends of the knot, but the further out they get the heavier she feels, and the gravity mixed with alcohol makes her eyes hazier than expected. Still, she focuses on her fingertips against his back, moving slower and slower the further out they get from the hard center. As her stroke is close to its end, Chuuya's hand reaches up to grab the back of the couch as his back curls down, and she wonders just what kind of tension was building at his back that it hurts this much.

Slowly, she feels the air come back into her lungs, and slowly her fingers glide themselves off of his skin as he sighs. Visually the ball is gone, and though she grips a hand on his back to keep her light-headed self steady she can't feel it under the fingertips of her other, only the thrum of his heartbeat from the other side of his body.

"Are you okay?" his question is through deep breaths, and though she originally nods, Quinn hums as an audible response still leaning against his back and bringing her forehead to the skin just below his neck.

"Stress?" the words come out with an exhale as she reaches her arms around his torso, her physical bearing as she works to keep her breath in time with his.

"Yes," Chuuya laughs without strain now. "You do have a tendency to do that to me."  
" _Oh?_ "  
" _Oh_ is correct." he brings his hands to cover hers at his stomach, and though she prepares for him to pull her hands away the action never comes, and instead he intertwines his fingers with hers.

"Good birthday?" she follows up, eyes close to coming to a close as she listens to the combination of his evening breaths and his heartbeat.  
"Yeah," he says in a voice that seemed surprised, and he hesitates before adding "It really was."

They sit in that position for a while, and Quinn thinks she'll fall asleep against the warmth of his bare skin until she remembers why she came to his apartment in the first place.

"Chuuya?"  
"Hm?"  
"I want to cut your paycheck by a third."

She swears she heard his heart stop.

"You _what?_ "


	12. Quinn Comes Clean!

Coffee, even if you hate it, tastes exceptionally good when you know it's the last thing you'll experience in your life.

With every burning sip this was all Quinn could consider sitting on the carpeted floor of her living-room. Juno's living-room. The living-room that once belonged to Juno and then her, and then whoever it was that they would find to inhabit the place next.

A week asleep a week awake. Quinn was asked to not attend work nor work with any people or numbers since she returned from the hilltop. At first she didn't notice, being that they held her in the medical wings and wards for a while, but that while turned out to be two days. Now it's been a week and for the first time in a while she feels like she has too much time only for it to eventually run out.

For starters, Quinn was pretty sure she could self heal. No one ever said this directly to her or asked her about it, but putting her sudden revival into the larger picture of her nose being fixed from slamming it until it cracked and then her feet being clear of any cuts or bruises despite running barefoot in a forest… It was more than freaky deaky, and even worse than freaky: it just made sense.

Obviously people began to catch onto this, and she assumed this was why she was held back in the weird hospital rooms for a few days, but everyone was told not to speak with her, and too many casual check-up things happened for her to question anything more.

Maybe that had something to do with her self incrimination: the hilltop. It was a stretch to think she could find Chuuya in the first place, but being that she did _and_ managed to note Corruption by name raised many red flags with Mori. Off of the adrenaline she promised him answers in trade for a sobbing Q's safety, but he must have realized what a joke trade that was or else he wouldn't have kept her on house arrest for the week.

Another sip nearly makes her gag, but it's the most liberating thing she's done in a while.

Quinn was ready to get up and pour herself another cup of the disgusting drink when there was a rough knock at the door. Unsure if the sound was from her head or actually happening, she waits in the hallway by the door, and like they knew she was expecting it there was another set of knocks. With a shaky hand she puts down her mug and opens the door, expecting something sinister on the other side to seal her fate.

Elise stands on the other side, and Quinn has to look down in order to make eye contact.

"You're not ready?!" she nearly whines, and instead of responding the older blinks still unsure if she's concocting apparitions. "Rintarou promised you'd take me shopping today!"

Quinn thinks of the last time she went shopping with a mafioso and nearly winces. _Was this to be her punishment?_

 _Yes, it was._

Holding bags both in and along both arms and balancing boxes between them, Quinn merely follows the literal dancing girl as she makes her way from store to store, swaying in the street to a song made from her own hums. Though they're followed by grunts in suits they make no move to take what she holds or to catch what almost falls into the street, and she wonders if this was a direct order from the boss himself.

"Ah, in here, in here!" Elise calls nearly a ways away and when Quinn catches up to her she slips into yet another store. Taking a breath to prepare herself to hold more, Quinn follows suit, but stepping in she's met with tables and chairs rather than hanging clothes.

"You can put those down here." the girl adds while pointing to a table, proceeding to direct the mafioso's that follow them in to watch her things while her and Quinn 'take a look'. Quinn, of course, is wary, but it doesn't matter because Elise drags her by the hem of her shirt further into the restaurant. When they stop to stand in front a counter of sweets she realizes it's a bakery, and looking at Elise through the corner of her eye she slightly smiles as the gleeful expression, tongue out and almost against the glass like a real child.

"I usually always get that one," she points to what looks like a rolled up spongecake with some kind of whipped icing and fruit inside. "but I've also liked that." now her finger ghosts a chocolate ball that likely surrounds a cake on the other side. Turning to watch her rather than the cakes before her, Quinn would swear that if the glass weren't there to separate the small blonde she would carnivorously eat everything from every corner.

"Do you eat a lot of cake where you come from?" Elise's question is out of the blue, and though Quinn wants to say the easiest answer she weighs her options to explain herself.

Like always, she doesn't.

"There's an Italian bakery close to where I work."

"The library." Elise points out casually, and Quinn wonders where she got that information from; she could only remember telling Higuchi about her previous life, and though she knew it wasn't completely in confidence she can't imagine her blabbing to the little girl. But Mori…

"Yes," Quinn decides to agree and assumes the boss is fishing for information through his humanoid toy. It's easy to treat Elise like a mere little girl, but she's an extension of the man who holds her life in the balance; he is not to be taken lightly.

"It's a university library," she adds "I mostly have the job because of federal funds. It was between there or doing campus tours."

"So you're a student?"  
"4.0 GPA."

Elise makes a face like she doesn't understand what that means, or maybe like she doesn't believe her; her nose is scrunched and her lips contorted into a frown as she looks around the other side of the glass.

"And where do we come in?" she asks, and the words are almost a complete ghost of Mori, Quinn feels a chill crawl down her spine.

"Like I said on day one—to me, you're all characters on a show."

Elise's eye twitches.

"Well, an anime, anime manga combination, plus a few light novels—oh, and a movie."

Quinn keeps talking, afraid of the silent void that plays out while Elise stares blankly into the glass.

"So you know everything that's going to happen?"  
"Not everything, no, that month I was back in _my_ body I only got so far in the manga and read two of the light novels." she nearly forgets who she's talking to and almost begins to reminisce on the heart-wrenching plotline of Beast, but watching as Elise nearly doesn't blink, or move, or breathe, she gathers herself together and clears her throat.

"It's different now, too," she adds. "Mori never got hurt as a result of the Guild conflict. That's why I was so concerned about Chuuya. Dazai is already so unpredictable, entrusting him with Chuuya's life as acting boss seemed… Wrong."

The name stirs something in Elise, and like she didn't just freeze over the young girl smiles.

"But you can predict him now, right?"  
Quinn blinks and debates answering at all. "For now."

Elise still watches her with a smile when a worker comes out to take their order, and before Quinn could ask anything further or even register that they were there, the girl is already listing off various names of deserts.

"And what do you want?" she turns to ask Quinn, and being in the new company she registers their prior short-lived conversation as over.  
"I'll just take a slice of the shortcake." Elise frowns at this, and the worker quietly laughs.

"Are you related to her father?" they ask. The question stirs the suspicion spoon in her head, and immediately she searches for a name tag or another definitive identifying feature. Thanks to the hat on their head and their tied back hair there is none, and Quinn gets the eerie feeling she's staring at a ghost.

"Excuse me?"  
"I'm sorry, it's just that the man usually with her always orders the same."

Their nervously bashful expression takes the edge off of Quinn's head, and like it'll serve as an apology for the harsh tone she slightly smiles.

"No, I'm just today's babysitter," she responds, and the embarrassed look of the worker is completely replaced with a gleeful one.

"That's great! I actually know a few people with kids—,"  
"Ah, I'm actually not adding to my roster now so—."  
"Oh, please, I understand, just let me…"

Neither of their thoughts reaches completion as the worker turns their attention to writing on a slip of paper. "My number." they say as they hold it out to Quinn, and at her hesitance they add "In case you ever need another job."

As soon as she takes the paper she crumbles it in her fingers and tosses it into her pocket. "Thanks," she mutters, appropriate and respectful conversational skills likely lost due to her isolation for the past week. The worker says something else to her when they finally pass her the boxes of cake, but Quinn pays no mind to it bringing all attention back to the blonde girl whose skipping her way out of the store.

When they're outside the first thing she sees is a sleek black town car parked right outside the bakery doors. The door to the car is open, and Elise stands in front of it as the mafioso's who refused to take anything from Quinn before now rush to take the boxes of cake out of her hand and stash them in the vehicle.

"You know," Elise calls as the men continue to fill the car with the days goods "you two are alike."  
Quinn assumes she's jumping back into their earlier conversation and refers to Dazai; her mouth stings, and she doesn't like the sensation one bit.

"I don't think we really have that much in common." she counters carefully, unsure if she's directly speaking to Mori or the girl he created. When the small blonde giggles she's sure it was demonic.  
"You'll see it," Elise says, the men around her directing her to sit so they could take her back to the towers. She doesn't speak to them but does follow their direction and crawls in the car, but not before leaving Quinn with one last cryptic word. "Soon enough, you'll understand."

* * *

The footsteps are almost unheard as the sound is absorbed into the hallway rug, and the only way he could identify her was the sudden brightness in the corner of his eyes from the fabrics she wore.

Normally, Chuuya would have relaxed seeing Kouyou where his mind may have been otherwise, but coming from the bosses office kept him even more alert.

"Meeting with the boss, ane-san?" the formality falls from his lips casually and comfortably, and no matter his position he knows it'll keep. Kouyou doesn't falter at the term, likely used to it by now, and lightly smiles at the other executive.

"I don't doubt that's why you're here too. You've recovered well, Chuuya."  
The ends of his lips twitch at the reminder, and his head nods to hide his pained expression.

Recovery meant he was forced to sit still, lay still, remain still in order to let himself properly heal. Corruption had the tendency to do that to him, a repercussion beyond the loss of his self; the whole week he was stuck with office work and second-hand reports while remaining in his own home. Though he was an executive, he was still weak to the orders of the boss above him, and when they say he is to remain in his home until further orders he doesn't fight them as much as he wants.

Chuuya wasn't called for anything in almost ten days which was more irritating than alarming, but it justified his jump to the towers the moment the message came. He was more concerned that he lacked the proper information to be present at a meeting than a meeting at all, but that changed when he saw Kouyou walk out the door he was prepared to enter.

"He's speaking to us individually?" it's an obvious fact that he needed to voice just to be sure—executive meetings weren't uncommon but singling everyone out when they're all able to be present sure is. "Anything I should prepare for?"

Kouyou's lips curl into a small smile but make no move to speak. Chuuya turns his head to hide his scowl. "It's about _her_ , isn't it?"

"You seem awfully concerned about a mere accountant."  
"I'm awfully concerned about anyone who knows more than we do."  
" _Chuuya_."

He makes a sound between a groan and a snarl scratching the back of his neck, her tone mirroring a 'play nice' that brought him back to her guidance in his younger years. He knows best to just accept the bosses word whatever that may be, but as the situation of this sleeper spirals further out of their ( _his_ ) control, Chuuya grows particularly agitated. She was always a wild card but sometime he realized she was just as predictable as his other subordinates—until the wild card factor had her slipping out of whatever pattern he claimed to see.

"Concern and paranoia are not your friend." she says after he was lost in his head too much; the words strike a particular chord to make him stand still and drop his hand as he remembers the last time they were said to him in the context of his old partner. Dazai, too, was a wildcard that, as much as he tried to assume his pattern, he would always break the mold. Now he's a traitor to the mafia legitimately working against them, yet he still has too much trust in him for an enemy.

"Do you think we can trust her?" the word tastes like metal on his tongue and he refrains from swallowing to show it's discomfort.

"I believe the boss has too many plans for her for us to consider otherwise."  
Chuuya frowns. That was not the answer he wanted.

When he does step into Mori's office the words are still playing in his head; as he bows, as he announces his presence, the routine is played without a conscious mind to it until he is asked his first question.

It's something simple, like how does he feel, recovery after Corruption mixed with concerns for being intermittent boss, but clearly his expression is confused at the words making Mori lightly laugh. It's a genuine sound with too much venom on each octave, and it's why he has remained the boss of the Port Mafia all these years; Chuuya wonders if his laughs will ever sound like that in his future.

"I take it you spoke to Kouyou outside?" Mori asks, and mixed with his apology Chuuya nods.

"Lightly," he clarifies "I wasn't sure what to make of these individual assessments." Mori hums, expecting the answer.

"When you were acting boss you were the one who suggested we move Machada from the tower hospitals to the safe house. What were your thoughts behind that?"

Chuuya hesitates and considers his answer; under the guise if Mori's final orders he asked Hirotsu to find his best men if not stay with her himself at the house in the woods to be sure she was isolated from all of the city conflict. It was a risky thing to do, especially where his relationship with Mori was concerned, but it seemed like the best thing to do.

"She's an asset." he finally says, thinking it through.  
"More-so than a threat?"

Mori's words being the metallic taste back into his mouth until he realizes what he's tasting is blood. At the words Chuuya's teeth sank too far into his tongue, and the warm sensation stings in a way that he really can't feel.

"I have my concerns," he mimes his earlier short lived conversation with the woman in the hall.  
"None that we can't handle, I presume." Chuuya nods, but doesn't say the words back. Soon Mori sucks in a breath of air to speak in a way that completely shifted the atmosphere of the office.

"In her world we are mere fictional characters whose journey she has followed all over the place. She's limited by what the author has allowed her to know, but is still well versed in people and events that are soon to come. I want her to use this knowledge as part of our strategic planning and organize an intelligence group she sees fit for our future goals."

Chuuya feels his eyes twitch. There was way too much in those sentences alone for him to consider them deeper at the moment.

"Fictional?" he repeats in disbelief of what he's hearing. "And you believe that?"

Mori doesn't make a move to respond, only smile as he leans further back into his chair. His arms, Chuuya realizes, out of the sling and folded in his lap as they normally were. For a second he wonders if the injury was so minor why he told him to take over in the first place, but questions with Mori were either met with gratifying answers or a black hole larger than the ones his unstable self could concoct.

"You said she was an asset. Why?"  
 _Why?_ Chuuya thinks about this often but sparingly; subconscious thoughts that gnaw at him at the end of the day when he takes the time to really sit on his decisions made. Normally they're right, but when it comes to Quinn Machada he's never sure what's right. He thinks back to the spiked tea on their shared elevator ride; her honest self that of a rambling and confused youngster, but more importantly paranoid. When he mentioned Dazai she was absolutely paranoid in ways he would have accepted to be directed at him, but instead he was pleasantly surprised with a repetitive attachment to the Port Mafia and what they offer. Though this proved her usefulness as one of many someones who is aware of their power, it wasn't exactly loyalty. Yet he went out of his way to isolate her unconscious self from the conflict with no way of knowing if she would wake up or even wake up as the same Quinn. _Why?_

"The same reason you're giving her a promotion," he slightly smiles at the idea, but he's not sure if it's him really doing it "she has knowledge that could benefit us, and I knew her death wouldn't benefit us at all."

Mori looks away with a fleeting smile. "I'm glad to know your personal opinions still don't get in the way of your work, Chuuya."

* * *

Quinn was sure Chuuya was letting his personal opinions get in the way of his work.

Though she was still left to work on the budget, the added responsibility of forming an intelligence force left her under the command of the executive more often than not. It wasn't like she was always meant to respond to Mori directly, but the habit became comforting. He was, literally, the dad to which no one could say anything to, which helped whenever Chuuya questioned her work. She could just toss in a "well Mori said" and that was it, conversation was over, she could get back to work.

But now Mori didn't say things, Chuuya said things, and Chuuya seemed to say less and less aside from critiques on memos and one worded responses that left her more confused than not. Legitimately, one word, as the first time they spoke after the hilltop incident and she told him she was glad see him recovered using the formality of his executive title, he wouldn't make eye-contact and merely said "likewise".

She doesn't doubt Mori spilled the beans, but this was not the behavior she expected from that. Intense and upset questioning was her go-to but instead she got a stone cold superior that made her already harder job harder. It sucks when none of the kids at school like you, but when your teacher doesn't care too much for you either really hits her in the gut.

So softly, she knocks on the open door to Chuuya's office.

"Do you have a minute?" her voice breaks the gentle silence in the room, work scattered between the desk he currently sits at further into the room and a table at the front likely for some kind of planning. The smell of recently brewed tea lingered in the room likely from this meeting, or maybe it was just a calming remedy of his. Either way, Quinn couldn't sense any tension in the room until she spoke, and Chuuya's eyes rise from whatever it was in his hands he was working on in a glare that kept her by the door.

"All your reviews go to Okumura." she uses his words as an invitation to walk further into the room but stands a ways from his desk.

"That's what I wanted to talk about, I don't think it's helpful I have to go through a third party about my work—,"  
"It's the system we've got Machada, take it or leave it."  
"Leave it. I want to directly report to you."  
"You already report to me."  
"No, I report to a mouthpiece and it feels like you do too."

Chuuya drops his work on his desk with a rough sigh, the sound rustling in the room like papers. Quinn remains still with her hands folded behind her back, though her fingers fidget with one another out of plain sight.

"Okumura is a trusted subordinate who has worked with me for years. He may be your mouth piece but he sure isn't mine."  
"So you can't trust me, that's what this is about?"

" _This?_ " Quinn scoffs as he raises an eyebrow with the word.  
"Yes, _this_ , this judgey avoiding thing you're doing. I get that I've only been here for a few months but I've made absolutely no moves that prove I'm a threat or even remotely anything like Juno, and I thought you realized that by now." she realizes she's speaking in an upset tone unfit for someone in her position to have when speaking to an executive, but she's gotten to the point that stepping around things in workplace jargon and post-it notes just wasn't cutting it.

Her liberation, however, is lost on Chuuya, and he stands from his seat at his desk pushing himself up by his gloved hands. His posture is overtly leaning in order to remain at her eyesight, but the position is also threatening and nearly makes every ounce of strength in her words falter back as she plans an apology in order to rephrase herself in nicer terms, but the words are lost as he speaks instead.

"Yes, you have been here for only a few months, and your predecessor was not a gem to employ in the slightest. Yes, you have done nothing to prove you're a strict threat, but you haven't done anything to prove otherwise either especially with your _sea of knowledge_ you've only recently told us about. _That_ is what I've realized, and it's only gotten worse for you as you avoid answering question from me _and_ Mori countless times."

"I've offered to help, I answer anything you ask what the hell are you—,"  
"No, you haven't." he cuts her off, and Quinn can't help but notice the way his fingers thrum against the wood of the desk like they itch to curl into a fist, itch to hit something as though he's refrained for so long. She wonders if it's all her, the constant sharpness in his tone and the agitation even in his mannerisms, and just like she spoke from a place of waiting impatiently for things to sway her way so is he.

He's right, really; she always skirt around any direct questions they've had making her more suspicious than helpful. She's always over spoken only to retract too much too soon, and though she's been a help it's not enough. In a group like the mafia there's a certain respect and loyalty that's created with time. _How much time has she had?_ It's felt like forever in her head but it's really only been a few short months with an intermission, _yet another thing she refuses to explain_.

"I'm sorry." her hands fall from her back and to her front, her fingers twining together in sheepish movements. She's ready to dismiss herself as the executive goes back to his work, a signal that the conversation is over and that her overstep, while wrong, will be swept under the rug, and he speaks the final words.

"Don't be sorry, just do as you're told."

 _Just do as you're told…_

Quinn has still been working with the messenger pigeon for another set of weeks thinking about the words Chuuya told her, the obedience he asked for that clearly she hasn't been giving. _Would it be 'clearly'? She tries, right? She's just…_

She groans with the drop of her head into a stack of papers on her own desk, lately finding herself secluded in her office thinking her impromptu outburst over and over again every time she finds herself on task-force paperwork. It doesn't help that she's failed to create a team yet either in these weeks; all the names, faces, and qualifications on paper seem ready to ruin her reputation at the drop of a hat as with one wrong move her credibility and usefulness really goes out the window, and like he threatened her on her second day, Mori will send her to the street, and though her survival wouldn't be out of the question as she could name a particular group that would hopefully take her in the chances seem empty, and then she would just be proving exactly what the executives and company already think of her.

The thought makes her head suddenly rise, hands flying to grab the papers at her desk and feet quickly bring her out of the office, into the elevator, and down flights of stairs until the light of the towers is gone and she's left in one of many dimly lit basements. She almost trips down the stairs at the change in light but instead manages to hide it as a jump from any onlookers despite her loud yell, but just like she expected there's no one in the particular room save for a single person who calls out to her.

"Are you crazy?" there are breaths between Chuuya's words as he speaks, pants likely from the workout she's interrupted visible by the sweat that makes his t-shirt stick to his skin, and the rest of the room padded with equipment of all kinds everywhere.

"I have no hand-eye coordination." she speaks, hands still tugging the ends to the array of papers at her chest.  
" _What?_ "  
"I have no hand-eye coordination which is why I tend to lean to the left when I walk, and it led me to have horrible balance which was why I never learned how to ride a bike."

He doesn't speak for a few seconds, probably answering his own question as a yes, she is indeed crazy. "How did you know I was here?"  
"I bribed one of your direct subordinates to give me copies of your daily schedule so I wouldn't accidentally get on the same elevator as you."

He sighs, taking a step forward and beginning to say something that would probably solidify that she would be in some kind of trouble for that, so immediately she holds up a hand while taking a step back as a sign for him to wait.

"You're gross and sweaty—,"  
"That is not helping your case."  
"I didn't come here to build a case or have a confrontation or anything, I came here because I always do as I'm told."

Reciting the words he said to her makes him raise an eyebrow, but he makes no move to speak or take any steps forward, and as his breathing evens his arms cross themselves across his chest in a motion that suggests she was to go on.

"Right, I always do what I'm told or what is expected of me because that's just the way I am, and maybe that's why I've been so awkward here aside from it just being my personality, but the thing is I would really like to do everything you or Mori asks of me, and I would really like to be able to answer all of your questions because that's who I am and if someone couldn't do the same with me I—."

"Wouldn't trust them." he finishes for her, and she nods.

"I get that these are just words that don't mean much, but you need to understand I have no cards to play, and just because I have a so called 'sea of knowledge' doesn't mean I'm going to use it against the Port Mafia, I legitimately, _honestly_ , _absolutely_ have no reason to."

The silence that continues after her mediocre speech gives all the power to Chuuya as he turns away to pick up a water bottle off the floor, and she's left standing (thoroughly not trying to watch him as he bends) still fidgeting with the paper in her hands.

"Why do you feel the need to explain yourself to me?" he asks, swinging his bottle up though not breaking eye contact as he chugs it down.

"Youngest child syndrome probably, I have an incessant need for authority figures to like me." his eyes narrow like the speech is odd, but why wouldn't it be for him, his prime example of siblings are the Akutagawa's.

"I also have a lot of respect for you, and your work ethic and your leadership style, and it seems like a _real_ shame that I work under you and not with you especially when it comes to making a group of people that I don't know in the slightest but you do,"

At this Chuuya turns away. "You don't respect _me_ , you respect the caricature of me." he crushes the bottle in his hand, and she finally realizes what's bothered him beyond the issue of her.

Quinn puts the piles of papers on the floor taking a paperclip off of one stack, and as she steps closer to him she unbends the curves the office accessory until it's a stick, and when she's close enough she pokes him on his arm until he bleeds.

This, of course, makes him cry out—not in pain but an angered "what the fuck!", and immediately he grabs the paperclip from her hand and crushes it. Of course, a part of her is afraid her wrist will be next, but fear coming in now would be the absolute worst.

"You're bleeding."  
"Yes, I see that too, now why the fuck—!"  
"Because you're real."

The statement makes his eyes narrow, and she's sure he's inherently calling her a psychopath.

"Okay, sure, I knew you, and Mori, and the Black Lizard as characters from before but those were all only portions that _completely_ shade in comparison to…" she gestures at him with her hands from head to toe. "I know plots, sure, but not people. You're whats real, literally flesh and blood, and you're the one with my respect, not the ginger on paper."

For a second she's locked under his icy stare, but soon he lets out a sigh that turns into a slight groan, clenching his teeth and looking away in a way that wasn't angry but mildly annoyed.

"You really are a wild card." he mutters, wiping the drop of blood with a gloved thumb and rubbing it against the hem of his shirt.

"What? You mean like the draw four in Uno?"  
"Yeah, sure, whatever that is."

* * *

 ** _A/N AHEAD_**

 _uh you guys can thank my roommate for this chapter being finished cause she sexiled me so instead of sleeping like i wanted to i stayed in the student lounge and churned out this monstrosity and then fell asleep on the couch only to be woken up by an ra at seven am. insert upside down smiley face emoji._

 _two pieces of news: one, we passed ten follows/faves so do a lil happy dance cause i sure am, and two, if you appreciated the chuuya birthday chapter i plan on following it up with a smutastic sequel/alt end chapter on the ao3 version of it soon because i feel the need to refine my smut skills lately and being five years rusty requires,,,much refining._

 _so thank y'all again for all the reads and reviews alike, aint nobody as dope as you._

 _it's the rainy end of spring so stay dry, stay safe, stay sassy—jackie._


	13. Quinn Plays Checkers!

"King me." her piece clacked against the wooden board louder than the drowning whirr of the ceiling fan. It was almost unsettling watching the agency members fingertips drag out the motion of his fingers crowning the piece that made it across the board, skin drawn over every inch of the piece, so instead of looking at his hands she looked at his face.

Not much better.

"That was a poor move."  
"It's the objective of the game."  
"The objective of the game is always to win, Quinnie."

She huffs. He jumps three more pieces.

Meeting Dazai the first time was a freak accident. The second was a misstep. The third she still doesn't know what to call it, and though their correspondence gave her an unsettling feeling she can't help but notice he's the one unsettled as she sits across from him on the agencies couch, his own seated position twitching into another every few seconds to the point where she was getting anxious for him. _Her move_.

It was a little after the Guild conflict and things seemed to die down; Quinn reached a certain trust with the executives and the rest of the mafia by helping their success, and she rode that wave of happiness to a plethora of celebratory parties and gatherings of the like alongside Higuchi until it reached the shore and died out. Everything went back to business as usual, mostly, and though Quinn was readying plans and personnel for the next wave of attacks amidst her new regularity of going comatose, she couldn't help but feel bored. The offices were getting too ritual and dark, and though the people kept her on her toes it was hard for them to do so when they retreated in the calm.

That's why when she heard a familiar nickname when at a market in town she didn't quickly step away in avoidance.

" _Elevator girl!_ " Dazai's voice managed to slip between everyone else's in a near cheery call; at the sound she sighed, deeply, clutching bags to her chest while contemplating running in the opposite direction before her body betrayed her and turned around with a polite smile.

"Ah, Dazai, what a surprise," with his closed eye grin she can't help but find it a perfect expression to smack him across the face, but the shorter figure at the brunettes side with a wary expression calls her attention away from her impulses, and the smile she feigned almost feels real. "You must be Atsushi," she nodded towards him as a sign of hello, and the gesture makes the embarrassed look wave off the younger agency member "I've seen you in the papers."

"Is that all?" Dazai muses while the younger boy next to him was still playing off the slightly embarrassed blush. Thankfully, they both ignored him.

"How do you know Dazai?" Atsushi's voice really is the calm against the storm, and it makes her want to wrap him up in a blanket, keep him by a fire, serve him a warm bowl of soup and threaten to murder anyone who dares to disrupt his peace.  
"We met when she was delivering papers to the chief—she works at a bank," Dazai answered for her as she was still lost in thought. The fake detail she nearly forgot reminding her of their short-lived conversation. _He doesn't trust banks._

"He asked me to die with him, nothing unusual."  
"Well, I've found that a woman like you is too interesting to die."  
"Oh?"  
" _Oh._ "

Quinn huffs at the memory, at the immediate invitation for her to join them back at the agency and her dragged out acceptance; she should have run and crushed the vegetables in the process. She wouldn't have been here losing another game of checkers for the week in the office of her enemies; she wouldn't have her eyes dart, paranoid, around every corner when crossing the street or conversing with the agency members no matter how nice they were. She would probably be at home trying to perfect a soft boiled egg.

Checkers was not her first choice and really happened on accident as the agency had an old board hanging around for her to amuse herself with when she impulsively came into the office to do work. She would stack the pieces to visualize numbers like a makeshift abacus and when people questioned it she would casually state her bank teller cover. It was nice, to work in the light and wildly converse with new characters, but then Dazai would sit in front of her and topple the pieces with a flick of his fingers and suggest they play a game, and then suggest they make it ten times harder. Ridiculous rules were added, from instating an expansion set and pieces after a given time frame to having to move your piece when you make the slightest attempt to reach it.

Currently stretching her arm to touch a piece she immediately recoils to act as though she was scratching the back of her head. The man across from her tsk's, shaking his own head, parody disappointment across his face.

"Rule number twenty-three."  
"It was an accident."  
"It wasn't an accident when I needed to stretch my arms last week."  
"I have an itchy scalp, it must be the shampoo."  
"I bet we could provide better brands for you."  
"I bet your funding couldn't get me my own apartment."  
"Would it be that bad to share with me?"  
"Do you even clean?"  
"Why would I clean when Quinnie could come over and do it for me?"

"I'm not your servant, Dazai." her voice doesn't waver, something that was part of this new and not really improved Quinn as she practically flicks a piece in front of her ahead a space.

"You're not my coworker either." the words are flat and almost mean nothing, but Dazai dramatically claps his jumping pieces against the board as if to call her attention and suggest he had some sort of power again.

If Quinn was sure about anything it was that Dazai hated her. He hated her omnipotence, the way she could almost see what he was thinking and know what exact experience built that thought as he unfortunately learned by picking her brain until she bled out like a scab. He hated her allegiance, the loyalty she would respond with any time he would suggest leaving the Port Mafia was the better option or the silence she would command whenever his words villainized Mori. But most of all, he hated that her mind was something he could not understand, that on the outside she managed to embody a schoolgirl with a devious part-time job, but on the inside, she was someone completely and utterly capable for that job—and more.

Nonetheless, he welcomed her with open arms and curious eyes reminiscent of a snake tangling its prey to their demise. If he saw her on the street he invited her back to the agency and made sure she knew everyone. If she showed up on her own accord his energy would spike with the greeting along with the more annoying aspects of his presented personality. Never did he make her feel threatened or unsafe when they were in the same space, but taking one step out of the agency gave her the cold feeling of vulnerability at all sides; originally she only had to worry about the Agency in her off time and what they would do should they find out she was some sort of mafioso, but now she has the Port Mafia to worry about should they realize she's in cahoots with the agency (even if unpolitical). And should the Agency members realize she's a fraud? That's a war on all fronts she should prepare for, yet she had nothing.

Dazai, then, was like a weird safety boat to which she relied on. This she would never admit aloud or in writing, and even when it passes in her head she squashes the thought like a bug.

"Speaking of work…" his voice is like a song as he brings his hand back to his face, fingers dragging themselves across his lips before he sets his cheek against his knuckles. Quinn thinks this all happens in slow motion, but the way the grin spreads across his face seconds after reminds her it was all real time, his movement was just agonizingly slow.

"Please don't," she speaks to both his physical display of cockiness and topic of conversation looking back to the board ahead of her, the majority of the pieces scattered to the corners like soldiers waiting to cross no man's land.

"I'm just making conversation,"  
"There are so many other things to talk about, the weather, you needing to shower more than once a week."  
"The success of your intelligence team?"

She groans, he laughs, and she doesn't know what else to do with the pieces or this conversation so she lets her body slump forward, hair falling over her shoulders and almost touching the floor.

"It's great," she huffs wrapping her arms around her legs as she leans her forehead against her knees, huddling like a shrimp as though the position could protect her from the idea of her failing work-life "I'm really making headway."

"No you're not."  
"No I'm not."  
 _No, she definitely was not._

"Can I ask for a spoiler?" he taunts, and she's glad she can't see his expression nor position with the words.

"I'm sure you're already five steps ahead what I already know." which would be great because her mind is overstressed from remaining at the start of the hunting dogs arc; ultimately, no one is safe, and she's not sure how her skills could come in handy with a plot that elaborate, let alone the looming threat of cannibalism.

Dazai dramatically sighs, allowing the sound to reach the back of his throat like a displeased moan. "I don't understand why you work yourself in circles." as always he speaks like his words are a testament, the light of day that makes everything clear no matter how convoluted his speech.

"If I make things too easy for myself I'll just get bored." Quinn's voice is muffled as she speaks to her legs but still it's enough for him to continue the conversation as he sees fit.

"Easy?" he perks at the word with a light laugh that makes her feel sick inside. "What about you is easy? You're an inter-dimensional girl with knowledge of the future and its major figures. That's definitely not easy to understand."

"No, it's not, you're actually giving me a headache."

"Agh, please, your situation is nothing to you, the only reason it's become complicated is because you have to learn to change your information when sharing."  
"Sharing is caring, Dazai, I know that's new to you."

"Not for intelligence it isn't."  
Quinn raises her head at the i-word.

"You've kept your secrets for this long alone, and let's not forget all the information you're getting looking at all those slimy _bank_ numbers," Dazai is breaking the thoughts up like a parent cutting their food for a child, but she doesn't need the scraps.

In light of the Guild conflict, Mori called Quinn back to discuss forming a new artillery and intelligence group to combat whatever the looming threat was again citing her clairvoyance as key to her success and her appointment. However, instead of building an actual group he wanted her to find a singular person who manages the skills, the thoughts, and the general capabilities five or more mafiosos would previously achieve. One single intelligence unit that lays deep within the Port Mafia headquarters—and wherever else they deemed it important for their presence to be. They and _her_ , of course.

If she was still being required to partner up and work with this "optimal" person, Quinn initially considered volunteering herself for the position. She already had all the knowledge necessary, she just needed to be taught skills; but everyone—literally, everyone—refused to do so. Higuchi let her hold a gun in the indoor range sometimes but to fire it with actual bullets was something she had yet to experience. Gin would allow her to observe her training but never bothered to speak a word of explanation, or even let her see that closely what it was she was doing. Originally she understood that it was because of her wary position being the now-alive-traitor, but at this point everyone has stopped seeing Juno when Quinn walked into a room. Now it's just an irritating disadvantage.

"A lot of things house information, it doesn't make them important." Quinn sits back straight in her chair, eyes observing the game board in front of her hoping to shift his attention. Feeling his own gaze burn itself into her head she finds her subtle objective epically failing.

"What, you, not important? Please, if Mori has kept you alive this long whose to say he won't jump seeing how you'd react voluntarily putting yourself in the line of fire again." _again.  
_ "He's going to say no."

"If he says no then do your party trick," he says referring to her tendency to stab herself with random sharp objects at odd hours only to find the wound closed as soon as the object is pulled back, a result of her short-lived obsession with this healing ability she has and wondering how far it went. Of course, she's kept her testing away from vital organs and situated around dangling limbs—most of all she's kept extremely strict policies regarding physical contact with Dazai, which hurts because sometimes she wants to give him a crisp high-five across the face.

"You're a bad influence, you know that?" Quinn watches him carefully as she speaks, his eerily smooth smile spreading across his cheeks with nearly listless eyes wrought from a combination of a lack of sleep and his constant bodily exertion nonetheless.

He doesn't verbally respond but instead hums, and her mind translates the sound immediately; _"I know."_

* * *

The red carpets of the hallways softened the sounds of her shoes creating a silence that surrounded her on all sides. It's eerie, but Quinn has become used to it and started a plethora of countermeasures. Tapping her fingers against the binder in her arms to the tune of the classic "tainted love" she manages to fill the silence with a bit of noise, and the men outside the bosses door hear her coming enough to sigh (likely in disbelief she's still alive). To open the doors all she has to say is a mere "the boss is expecting me", but the light-hearted sounds do the trick too, and by the time she makes it to the door, it's already opened allowing her to step in.

"Sorry to interrupt boss," the first thing she says upon viewing the set up of the room. Rather than remaining empty save for his desk in the far back, an elegant dining table stands at the center in a deep mahogany that shines under the dimmed lights; at the center with a white lace runner falling off the ends and all along the table are various desserts of shapes, colors, and sizes. It's beyond what she's seen in an actual bakery, and her mouth nearly waters at the whipped cream that tops _everything_.

"Hm? Oh, Ms. Machada, would you please help me convince Elise to stop eating so many sweets, it's just no good for her health!" at the head of the table sits the little blonde girl, legs curled together in her lap as a plate rests atop them, a small grin directed towards the cake on the plate as she takes another bite with a loud pleasured sigh. Mori sits to her right, hands in his lap as his gaze is focused on the way the girl intently devours her meal. Quinn tries not to think about how their seated positions remind her of her parents at dinner; a doting wife to the right of the father.

She lightly coughs the memory from her mind. Nothing good comes from remembering home.

"Elise, if you eat too much dessert now there won't be enough left over for tomorrow." Quinn attempts to barter with the girl taking enough steps in to stand by the furthest seat from the two at the opposite end. Ahead, Elise falters a bit and loudly swallows her bite.

"You're tricking me."  
"You got me."

Mori sighs at the two in defeat, pushing his chair back and stepping away from the table to lean against the back of Elise's chair; the true head of the table.

"Budgetary meetings are with the executives at the end of the month. What brings you here early?" the question beckons her closer and is ironic considering she was summoned, and as she makes her way up the table she sets the binder in her arms at his left.

"I have the final portfolios for the intelligence recruitment."  
"And Chuuya's looked them all over?"  
"No."  
"Why?"  
"Because I'm at the top of the list."

Elise drops her fork to her plate with the last bite, looking up at the boss with an interesting stare that he doesn't return. Instead, he still watches Quinn, and the lack of words from him urges her to continue, but no words come out. The only thing she hears is her own thoughts, in Dazai's voice, saying a succinct term: _party trick_.

"Elise," the word makes her turn to meet Quinn at eye level as she sits to her left and holds her hand up at her elbow. "I want you to push your fork as hard as you can through my hand."

The directions are odd, but she can see the way the young girls face lights up at the request. But again, there is hesitance, and she tilts her head up to Mori as if asking is she was allowed. The boss is emotionless, elbows on the back of her chair and hands interwound in front of him. Quinn turns to him after seconds go by and there's no answer, and his eyes shift over her like he can find some bodily cue to read her intent. He can't, but that doesn't stop him from haphazardly waving his hand giving Elise permission to mutilate. When he does, she giggles, and just as Quinn turns back to the girl the fork has punctured the palm of her hand and sticks out of its back. It stings, much like the butter knives and glass shards she studied herself with, but she makes no movement to show any signs of pain except for a sharp inhale and a slow breath out all through her nose.

Still seated, she turns to the boss who eyes her curiously above the chair and points to where blood begins to drip from the wound created by the silver. He makes no move to respond or question clearly expecting more to occur. She abides, and slowly she pulls the fork out of the center of her hand. As she does the skin at the top of her hand begins to heal over, wounded edges connecting to new fresh tissue beneath droplets of blood just as it does at her sweaty palm when she finally takes the silverware all the way out. It's covered in blood, her blood, and so is her hand, but there's no wound for it to escape from. The only red is what is now smudged against her skin glistening as it stains like a new lipstick.

Gleefully, Elise reaches up for the fork, and even though it drips in her blood Quinn hands it to her. The blonde girl's eyes go wide when she holds it in her hand, and she strokes a finger along the falling crimson now staining her own pale flesh in red.

"Look!" she cheers as she shows her finger to Mori, and the boss merely hums, beckoning for Quinn's hand with his gloved fingers. She extends it to him as he removes himself from the chair and leans closer to her and gently he takes her wrist, perched over her like Dracula and flipping her hand in every direction, inspecting every bit of skin and even dragging the fabric of his gloved thumb where the wound would have been at the palm of her hand. The red liquid that stayed now begins to stain his gloves, spreading from the tip of his finger down like ink in water.

"And you felt pain?" he asks, pressing his thumb into her hand making her shift a bit in the chair.

"A bit, but it hurts more after it closes. My guess is that it heals from the outside in. Normally it's still sore for another hour, like the process is longer the deeper it has to work."

"Not it— _you_." the word reminds her of the way he said "fascinating" months ago in reference to the cost of plastic straws, and though he reminds her she is indeed a person she can't help but still feel like an _it_.

"If _I_ have this defense mechanism this makes me more efficient than any of the other contenders." she sits up with her shoulders straight, head back, a power pose that took more energy than naturally slouching ever could—but that was exactly the point; she was trying to be better than the self she put off for the past few months that let people underestimate her and thus decide her limitations.

"Yes that is correct," Mori still observes her hand like a specimen to be scrutinized under his Ph.D. "I was wondering how long it would take you to figure out your endurance for field work."

"You knew I would recommend myself?" it was a dumb question considering that was exactly what was happening, and with one more squeeze, he lets go of her hand to stand and offer her a napkin.

"I knew pairing you with Chuuya would create a stalemate considering you're very intent on not sharing any of your future knowledge, but you managed to help our success against the Guild nonetheless while continuing with your original job _and_ earning Chuuya's cooperation. You're insistent on protecting the Port Mafia as well as yourself, you're dedicated to your work, and you rarely have a scratch on you even if too many of our members label you as clumsy."

Her brain suddenly plays a montage of the desks she's stubbed her toe on in the middle of meetings, of the air she's graciously tripped on in hallways, of spitting hot coffee back into mugs and yelling at the temperature and walking into glass partitions all throughout the towers. She sits up a little bit straighter.

"I have no problem with you becoming our potential head of intelligence, you'll be a good replacement for the void Sakaguchi left if not better counting on your allegiance, _but_ ," he doesn't stress the word but tension is all she can feel the minute it spreads across his lips and into the room, and she works to hide her discomfort "you will need to have the executives on your side be exhibiting some self-control."

"I can't control my sleeping spells." it's the first thing she blurts sounding just as idiotic as her last words.

"They have gotten shorter."  
"I'm not intentionally making it that way, it's just the way it works."  
"We could help. What is it you see when you sleep?"

 _Oh, right, a trap_. A trade, really; a kick-ass promotion for information. Or maybe it was a test. Was this the guise to which she would fall for not seconds after she sat up like a princess for ten minutes and said I deserve to wear big girl underwear?

It didn't matter anyway, all the information she had was a big flaming bunch of nothing. "They're just dreams." and they are, or they seem to be. Though they feel as concrete as memories to which she dives into like Dumbledores pensieve, when she wakes up it's like grasping for straws at something that feels close to reality yet isn't and she wonders if it's her trying to piece together Juno's life in order to understand her own. It wasn't like the first night where she could remember the shift in world from the aches at her wrist to a splitting headache suggesting what she now calls reality, it's more like a real dream where it feels so real to be in it at the moment and then suddenly you awake to realize nothing happened at all proven by a lack of memory. It's a REM that just lasts a few days, a comatose state that sometimes doesn't even leave her well rested.

"We were just a dream too, no?" Mori goats her into more but she feels dizzy at the thought staring into the icing that perfectly swirls on top of a likely delicately moist and intensely soft cake.

"I think fiction is different from dreams." For a second she thinks she can see the condensation of the melting topping, but when she blinks the full picture is back and it's just a perfectly plated confectioners tower.

"How so?"  
"Well… Fiction is planned, hopefully, and dreams are just—,"  
"Spontaneous?"  
"Spontaneous."  
"Like a memory?"

No, not like a memory, but something hits her looking at the cake, the sound of a man whose arms slink around her waist to fit as seamless as the icing. He has a name, a nickname, and a swell of emotions rises in her chest as she tries to find it but nothing comes up, and then she's sinking again, surrounded by darkness and choking on water calling out a name she can't even hear.

Quinn doesn't remember leaving Mori's office to sit in her own, or the fall of the sun allowing evening traffic to sound outside of the window and into the silent tower. Her eyes dart across the room like she's looking for clues but she feels stuck in her own body before they find a paper in front of her, ink smudging on the edges from the repeated writing of one word at every possible corner: Nichi.

Quinn frowns, hands grabbing the paper and holding it closer to her face before speaking into the night.

 _"_ _What the fuck is a Nichi?"_

* * *

 ** _AN AHEAD_**

at this point ive forgotten all english grammatical conventions and thats fine cause this aint about perfection its about progress baby.

this chapter has seen two bsd marathons, a night in which i watched almost all of caitlovesdisney's youtube videos, a rewatch of kimmy schmidt, the creation of a soukoku playlist, two new jobs, the start of me watching the new season of sao, and three play throughs of logic's new album (not necessarily in that order). i thoroughly considered just dropping it and waiting until "muse" came to me but then i remembered seeing an instagram comment on an edit i saved recommending this fic, and emails notifying me of reviews and favorites, and i really couldn't do that to you guys or even myself. so, as always but especially now, i wanna thank you readers so very much for dedicating yourselves to staying with this fic just as i have. you work as hard as i do trying to make sense of this craziness—you deserve praise more than i.

off of that i have managed to deliver on my chuuya-bday-smut follow up; that chapter is on the ao3 post (user notbazluhrmann) as well as another work in progress porn-with-plot type thing for him and quinn, so if thats your poison go ahead and pick it and act like that sentence i just wrote made sense.

thanks again for sticking with me, and i'll hopefully be back to friday updates by next week.

 _stay cool (because this summer heat KILLS), stay safe, stay sassy—jackie._


	14. Quinn Writes Fanfiction!

There was always something unnerving about the impeccably clean apartment that once belonged to her previously executed self. Quinn, however, always liked clean, so she considered it an odd gift and kept up with the maintenance of perfectly aligned boxes on shelves and tucked her quilt back in when she awoke every morning making everything as pristine as it once was.

Now, cleanliness was thrown to the wind as she burrowed through everything throwing old toothpaste bottles and shampoos into the empty hallway as she digs through the bathroom cabinet. The same was true of the kitchen where she cluttered all the pots, pans, and cleaners on the counters without any particular order as she scoured the house for something that she really couldn't describe. A diary, maybe, or a hidden room that's beneath the floorboards, or maybe just a sign of Juno's life before her that gives her a clue as to what the fuck is happening when she dissociates now.

When she sleeps for days and comes up with a head full of hazy dreams, Quinn understands it as an occupational hazard. When she blacks out in the office of the Boss only to awaken hours later confronted with a paper that she has no memory writing on nor what it was she wrote, that's just some bullshit.

"I hate this body, I hate this body," she mutters the words to herself and whatever demon has possessed her so they understand they are not on the same page, pushing past partially empty shampoo bottles to find: nothing.

 _Nichi… Is that a person? A meal? A password or some other code?_ Quinn feels the identity on the tip of her tongue but just can't place it, and with a sigh she pushes herself up from her hands and knees to face herself in the mirror, hands gripping the ends of the sink as she finds herself looking into the details of her reflection.

Her face is much of the same though her cheeks have become a bit more rounded rather than the sharply thin jawline she was met with in her earlier time, probably a result of the metabolism she hated finally giving in just as her new and poor(er) diet and lack of exercise kicked in at the rest of her hips and dips. It was nice, to feel like she was making this body her own, but proof of anarchy was still evident from the curve of her nose to the hair that falls (and tangles) down her back and over her shoulders. Pink roots spread across the top of her head and begin to trickle down strands of the poorly maintained brunette like someone took a dropper to her scalp with the 2016 Pantone color of the year. It's a strange contrast to see on her head, but it was almost ironic as it matched her dilemma; the color seeping through no matter how hard she tries to cover it the equivalent of Juno's seeping… Consciousness?

Quinn makes a gargling noise before leaning her head against the mirror, sighing when her hot head comes into contact with the glass. She really doesn't have time to dye her hair.

* * *

Days and a dye job later, she sits with Tachihara in an outside cafe eating ice cubs from her cup as the faux redhead opposite her seems incredibly focused on the menu in his hands. Quinn has had zero luck in her search on Nichi, but more profoundly she's had zero luck in finding anything about Juno's life. It's not that there's nothing there, but that she has no access—which is odd considering she was just self-promoted. When she tried to explain herself to the woman in charge of guarding all physical records in the basement of tower three she was forcibly removed from the underground by a security team she didn't know existed.

Thankfully no one knew she was thrown on her ass but Higuchi (the one who directed her to the records room after suggesting Nichi may be a nickname), which somehow made her job both easier and harder; a bug of caution seeped into her mind in the search after the incident, and Quinn's questioned no one regarding her past lives affairs, which meant that she's gotten exactly nowhere.

"Do you know everyone's nickname in the Port Mafia?" Quinn asks through the sounds of crunching ice in her teeth as the man across from her flips a page. He seemed to be the replacement-Higuchi whenever the woman was indisposed of—ie, now, parading across Yokohama in disbelief that Akutagawa has a female companion and in for a rude awakening regarding Gin's identity and her own sexuality—and their dynamic seemed to work for one another as he never actually listened to anything she had to say as she would follow him in his continued attempts to stalk Yosano no questions asked.

"Just immediate coworkers, and the ones people write about in fanfiction," he says the words like they're completely natural and Quinn spits shards of ice cubes back into her cup at her chosen term, suddenly feeling the kind of meta that threatened to make her lose her shit had she not already lost her shit.

"I'm sorry, what did you just say?"

Finally, he looks up from the menu, eyeing the drops of water that splattered off her cup and onto the table, and with a scoff he replies "It seems like you heard me,"

"Yes, I heard you, but did you hear you?" it was inane to consider the term said by any mafioso (okay, maybe a certain blonde fanatic could have been an author) but for it to be said by the brutish assassin and hunting dog in a way that insinuated one of his past times include _actively reading_ the term… Did she really hear him?

"It's funny," seemed to be all he decided to say about the topic before shifting conversation to what he should order since Quinn was paying. Quinn, however, was not done, and still spoke her train of thought aloud ignoring him as he would often her.

"People write fanfiction about the Port Mafia?" she asks in disbelief, and hours later she's sitting in the middle of her turned-over living room with her laptop tucked between her legs.

People indeed write fanfiction about the Port Mafia, not unlike the thing's she's read about the Property Brothers or President Obama and his VP. The citizens of Yokohama seem to be fascinated by the organization shrouded in secrecy, even as they have no idea as to who anyone is. For instance, Mori is just the boss and lacks a name (yet he is still featured in crossover work with existing ADA members and often suggested to have a romantic history with their leader), and the existence of executives is made out to be like they are his pets. From lewd interactions in a high-rise elevator to platonic meetings outside of work she finds nearly everything and all sorts of misnamed people, the shock and awe nearly makes her forget about her quest for Nichi.

That was until she saw the name tucked between words in a lengthy paragraph about oceanside operations.

If she wasn't already seated on the floor she would have fallen over, but instead, she wobbled from the inability to understand how the name didn't exist except in supposed inaccurate accounts of illegal affairs, and what she could gather was the following:

Nichi was brunette. Some kind of dark brown hair mopped onto his head in some aerial direction that varied in details but what was consistent was the brown. He worked in shipping and she had good reason to believe he was the leader. Workers cursed him out and he had a trend for being a smug buzzkill except for lunchtime when he would fund barhopping that often ended work early.

As far as Quinn was concerned he had no reason to be inked on her workspace after a blackout. He wasn't important enough to sit in the subconscious of her mind, brown hair and occupation alike.

Closing her laptop she yawns, rubbing her eyes until purple showed up in the darkness. As much as she enjoyed good smut placed in between the budding war for Yokohama in fiction, she was still left with straws to grab of a person who may not exist. She wasn't any closer to understanding Juno or her connections, nor was she closer to finishing any work regarding the budget or whatever it was she was supposed to be doing as intelligence. Opening her eyes to the mess around her Quinn faces the reality that she wasted to much time on this one thread of an issue that she didn't bother to really dissect the bigger problem.

There's a chunk of her day missing.

Often times she's missing for weeks at a time, but being (theoretically) asleep in those cases gives her the peace of mind that nothing really happens.

But this unconsciousness was slipping into her days even if for seconds at a time, the plural growing from a deep paranoia that this has been happening more than once. What if her slips in memory haven't been poor concentration? What if there was something actively wrong with her beyond all that was at the surface?

 _What if Juno was coming back?_

A shiver falls down her back and makes her hands clench. If Quinn ever had that thought before it was buried, and being brought to the forefront of her mind was a Victor Frankenstein move digging up the dead and letting their bodies sinfully run amuck again.

For months Quinn has successfully reminded everyone that Juno was dead and she was here to stay in her place, but how much could she be sure that was true? Wasn't she already an example of spontaneity? Who said it had to be a one-way thing?

"No, no, no, no," Quinn shakes her head like a dog standing from the floor and making her way to the bathroom mirror, staring into her greatest foe and longest companion, she points an accusatory finger. "You don't get to do this anymore, you had your shot," she continues to converse with her reflection despite the covered roots and rounded appearance.

"If you wanted to do something important you shouldn't have _died_." the words come out like a hiss, pointer finger nudging into the cold glass that further pressure may have actually caused it to crack.

"You're a ghost!" Quinn is screaming now as her finger closes itself into the rest of the fist she throws against the glass. Immediately she feels her knuckles sting and expects to see blood with shards of glass glistening from wounds that would only close up as time ticked by, but the mirror was whole and merely shook a bit at the contact. Under her breath she lets out a curse, shaking her hand at the sensation of a bruise lingers but does not show.

"You—!" she yells at the mirror again but has suddenly lost her breath, and instead an incoherent blurb echoes in the bathroom.

* * *

Her knuckles still sting as she throws another fist and misses its target to collide with a pillar of wood, splinters falling everywhere except her skin.

The contact brings her tongue further into her mouth as her teeth clench and she throws a kick instead, but it too manages to hit nothing, and the offset makes her lose her hold and trip backward to the ground. The collision of her back to dirt makes her cough, but amidst the noise, she hears a playful sigh more unsettling than the damage being done to her ego.

"Giving up already?" Dazai coos as he tilts his head over her own, standing above her fallen frame with his hands in his pockets. He doesn't look like he's broken a sweat.

"Just a break," Quinn speaks with a wave that calls for a truce, and his exhale is now one of a bored child after being told they cannot leave for ice cream.

"You American's and your breaks," he mutters, taking steps in an unidentifiable direction as she stares up at the sudden passing clouds in the darkened sky through crumbling ceiling tiles.

Quinn didn't think anyone could mentor her on control better than Dazai could.

No, that's not true. Chuuya has an unstable demonic entity living within him and has to manage that on the regular, so let's rephrase.

Quinn didn't think anyone could rigidly mentor her on control without actually lecturing her about it and taking physical steps to prepare herself for any kind of internal threat better than Dazai could.

She still wavered on this, but at this point, she's dedicated too much time to working with Dazai that convincing herself otherwise would prove disastrously counterproductive.

Originally she just wanted some pointers, but that didn't seem to excite him enough to listen to her nor take part in any actual 'help'. "Isn't that just a circumstance of being you?" he threw around a couple of times, and she would normally swat whatever was in his hands at the time to the ground as an attempt to explain how serious she was about this.

"Then you need a routine."  
"I already have a routine."  
"No, you have a ritual."

Apparently, the difference between a routine and a ritual to Dazai was the physicality of it. Brushing her teeth at night? Ritual. Sparring at the crack of dawn? Routine. Watching the news as she got ready in the mornings? Ritual. Drinking sake until she was just-barely intoxicated? Routine.

If being part of the Port Mafia wasn't going to kill her alone, willing using Dazai as a guide for helpful behavior certainly was.

"Come on, you can't lay on the ground forever."  
"We can make a bet."  
"Your body, your decision."

"That's so respectful," the words are a bit strained as she stands back up, bones aching in the dullest of ways before she readies herself in another fighting stance. "What are we gonna do if I hit you?" the question comes with a slight rock of her feet observing his lack of preparation as he merely stands in front of her, though the words do put a small smirk on his face as his jacket sways in the wind.

 _"_ _Hit me and find out."_

She has yet to hit him.

She _has_ hit a bunch of other things.

Dazai said that she needed to anchor her head to this world in order to be able to place it in her memories. The sentence seemed convoluted at the time and made no sense considering everything he had her do was something that ruined her headspace, but after a while, she found that that was his point.

They sparred in open fields originally but that would only make her trip onto nothing. When it was the already falling infrastructure of abandoned homes she would hit things, feel a sear of pain despite there being no sign of it on her body. Three days would pass by and she could place each little twitch of her hand to a location remembering the mornings and the evenings that followed in a series of aches throughout her body. When she was half drunk in the floors of his unlived apartment it was like a test of tolerance bringing herself to the verge of a blackout so that she could still remember her sins in the morning.

Adrenaline, alcohol, those were to be her anchors reminding her that she was indeed in control of her vessel.

"Not that I'm in any place to judge, but this is making for an incredibly unhealthy lifestyle." she has still yet to throw a punch unsure if her body could handle the motion, standing in a sway against rotted wood beneath her feet.

"You knew what you were walking into when you gave me your nights."  
"Yeah, well, I expected more ramen and not less sleep."

In the slightest of sunlight, she notices a downward curve on Dazai's lips, a frown that seems out of place and disappears into a thin line just as soon as she saw it.

"When was the last time you got sleep?" his concern is odd so she drops her arms while staring at the sky. Aside from oddly placed naps in her day Quinn really couldn't remember the last time she got real sleep in the week she began this strenuous routine. She really did devote her nights to him, and the hours left before the day she ended up back in her own home going about her _ritual_ before heading to work. _The last time she got real sleep?_ That had to be more than a week ago when she fell asleep in her office, right after her meeting with Mori, when she—.

"It's when you blacked out, right?"

Quinn smiles as he speaks, jumping with a small 'whoop' before pointing a finger at Dazai ahead of her.

"Yes!" she cheers "After I was dismissed from the office I was going to balance dry cleaning numbers but then I just got so tired I fell asleep in my chair," the image is hazy but its there, like she's reading a diary that got its pages wet and the ink began to ran making everything nearly illegible except to the owner who knows what they wrote "then I had one of those Juno dreams," she adds, quieter as her excitement dies down and it's her turn to frown

"Can you remember?" Dazai asks standing in front of her, yet with the scenes playing in her head he feels miles away and she nearly doesn't hear him.

"It's kind of… Disorienting…" the word isn't far from the truth; as much as she feels she can see the pieces she was looking for it all felt out of order, random, flashing in her head and leaving as soon as it pops up. Soon she shakes her head as though it would wipe her mind clear. The small memory coming back with what she saw wasn't what concerned her, it was Mori's words said earlier that day suggesting that dreams aren't that far from memory, like he knew just what it was she was falling into whenever she closed her eyes for too long.

"I'm not sure what to make of any of this," the words come out as a mumble from her mouth as she stares nowhere in particular. In the beyond she feels she hears Dazai hum.

"It's not any different from any sort of data," he points out, and the suggestion makes her scrunch her nose with the rest of her face looking back at him ahead of her.

"What do you do with data, Quinn?" she's not sure what he's looking for nor what mindset she's supposed to be in as she mulls the question over.

"Well I… I analyze it?" she feels like a student back in class hoping that there are no wrong answers, and the idea of being a student makes her repeat herself "I analyze it and write a report."

* * *

A report just would not do for this kind of information, and with her new knowledge of what this world entails Quinn decides to turn to the one medium that would never defy her: the written word of Fanfiction.

Sitting at her desk she chugs down a glass of water while staring at a blank page on her computer screen preparing herself for the step into hell she's been bound to take from the start. Fanfiction; the world of unnecessary details and documentation for experiences that will either remain unread or become adored. It helps that the Port Mafia already has their own well-endowed library with enough falsities that hers would only fly further under the radar.

Quinn takes a deep breath. She closes her eyes, rests her hands at the base of her keyboard, and waits for the words to hit.

She waits a little bit longer.

She opens one eye and looks at the keyboard to make sure her hands are positioned correctly.

She closes her eyes again with another deep inhale.

Her hands do not more.

"God damn it," the words come with an irritated sigh, leaning back in her chair and folding her hands in her lap. She needed to get into the mindset of a writer.

 _Where to begin, where to begin._ Should she even bother with writing chronologically? What backstory did she even have for Juno to understand her character? Maybe she should write backward from her arrival to the uncovering of Juno's identity.

No, that wouldn't do. This wasn't about Quinn this was about Juno, and Nichi, and their boss-employee relationship that really should've been kept under better wraps instead of kissing in broad daylight on a cargo ship.

"Well that's a start…" the images come back to her with the mutter and soon her hands are back to the keyboard and typing, describing the sepia filter to the leather skirt she oddly wore for her position. Like she was describing a picture book she was able to see the dreams that were so wrapped up in her own daily hypnosis she couldn't understand them amidst her own memories.

Because that's what they were: memories. Bits of Juno's life that still clung to her consciousness, or even her own consciousness clinging to Quinn's own life. The technicalities of it were enough to give her a headache so she focused on the concrete of what she could find brought into the world with every typed word.

Juno worked in shipping. She was a bit of a party girl in her spare time and often hung out in mafia casinos in order to trick wealthy players into buying her a drink. She beat up men that would grab her ass in bars. She could pick up crates nearly a hundred pounds in weight if she bared her feet properly. She kept her apartment messy and her closet untangled. She never threw out her clothes even if there were sudden holes from on the job.

Most of all, Juno was alone, until one day she wasn't.

Nichi showed up in her peripheral after she was thrown out of a casino for disorderly conduct. She was failing many attempts to light a cigarette and ended up throwing the lighter in a wayward direction, but he caught it. They made conversation, but Quinn couldn't hear despite seeing the scene in her head.

Until a phrase sticks out, and even makes Juno stand a bit more straight like he was finally worth her while.

" _I noticed you,_ " the words aren't cryptic at all but make Quinn's gut churn the moment she writes them down, hands freezing above the keyboard waiting for the next to come.

Her mind draws a blank, and she quietly curses to herself.

"I only want the name," Quinn speaks into the darkness of her office as if someone could hear her to answer.

The darkness doesn't reply, and gritting her teeth she sends her five thousand plus words into the black hole of the internet, closes the computer, and leaves for her first good night of sleep in a while.


	15. Quinn Does a Dance!

Walking into potential enemy territory angry, even with the most subdued agitation, is as dangerous as walking in unarmed. Chuuya knows this better than anyone, but the tick he felt that made him crane his neck into a stretch by the front door was unavoidable, and when he gave his name to the pristinely dressed men who were capable of breaking bone even if in a tuxedo he could tell that they noticed.

"Your plus-one has already arrived, Mister Nakahara."

Chuuya's eye nearly twitched; he waited outside of her home for nearly an hour like a fool in a carriage. Smoothly, however, he thanks the men at the door before stepping inside and of course preparing for the worst. She had no self-control, especially of her words, and to show up unannounced to an event like this was a new blow to his authority. Like a child, he considered explaining her ineptitude to Mori, but like an executive, he knew it would be better to let her play out her faults as the night goes on. The thought tugs the corner of his lip up in a slight smirk as he takes a glass of champagne from a passing tray, careful not to drink as he feigns a sip taking in the room before him.

As he descends the incredibly excessive staircase he first finds all the lights that fill the room from gallery-like flood lamps, each likely housing the smallest of cameras with the sharpest of sight. Like he's purely interested his eyes fall along the series of pillars that sustain the great height to which the ceilings reach covered by soft gold drapes in waves that he would immediately call tacky rather than decor. The room is, like everything else, excessive in its size despite being the supposed entrance to the house, and the hundred and thirty-four guests that fill the room stand around a series of oddly placed tables; there are no chairs, even for the instrumentalists who sing at the far back of the room where some guests dance evident by the flurry of dress tule creating a muted rainbow against the white marble floor. More importantly, there is an excessive number of exits that go to various ends of the house, staff with trays or mere hospitality coming through each as security is stationed by every break in the wall to stop anyone from walking through.

Chuuya expected as much from their host, the notoriously dramatic Chikao Tanaka, searching for his trademark suit of silver gleaming from the lights and a stark contrast to the gold of the room until his head darts in the direction of a laugh as he reaches the foot of the stairs. His sly smile threatens to fall into a scowl at the specific sound though he makes no move to react nor follow with his feet. His eyes, however, rove towards the corner it comes from, and between the black and white attire of suits and dresses alike he finds cotton candy hair.

As careless as ever she stood in an overly lit corner of the room already surrounded by some of the most powerful people of the Yokohama public, laughing as she would in the privacy of her own home to the point of reaching a hand to the woman's shoulder next to her to steady herself. Her entire demeanor is inappropriate, and even with the floor-length black dress similar to everyone else's attire, she stuck out like a sore thumb.

Chuuya did not expect as much from Quinn.

Her accompaniment was one of many surprises Chuuya was given less than a week ago as it was handed to him with the news of her new "probationary" placement in Port Mafia intelligence. The idea still jumbles itself in his head, still in disbelief that a girl whose loyalties are as strong as her lies made it this far and is still alive.

His first question, however, was not if he thought Quinn was capable, but why she didn't choose to come to him with the suggestion.

Perhaps that's why there's a bit more tease to his actions as he slips his way through the crowd and to her side with less than a word expecting to catch her off her guard, like he was looking for something to expose her thought process to him without the guise of tea. When his hand snakes itself across her back to rest on her hip he expects a recoil or a sudden tense of her frame, but like the motion was entirely natural she leans into his side.

"I hope she hasn't been a bother to you," Chuuya speaks up to the couple she was conversing with despite his presence alone drawing eyes from nearly everyone around her. Quinn makes some sort of "psh" sound effect with a wave of her hand only making the woman in front of her laugh.

"Oh, absolutely not," the woman says with a tap to her husbands chest who says the same despite his eyes baring holes into Chuuya's own frame.

"Have you met the Sakurai's, Chuuya?" in his peripheral he can see Quinn peer up beneath his hat to catch his gaze, but it's stuck on a slightly threatening purse saved for the man in front of him—the Sakurai in front of him.

"Not in person, no," he decides to say, making the man in front of him laugh and the ice in his eyes fade into a false warmth. "Chuuya Nakahara," he adds his introduction holding out his free hand.

Grabbing it to shake with an expected strength, the mans own dangerous gaze falls but only at a fraction. "Takahiro Sakurai," the name is supposed to make Chuuya feel small, or weak, or some other demeaning attribute, but instead it makes his lips bend into a smirk.

"I never would have expected you to turn up somewhere like this, Sakurai,"  
"Somewhere tacky you mean?" his response is in taste to the company of their counterparts, the women who supposedly know nothing as custom to a world that prided itself in secrecy and male superiority.

"Ah, you missed it, we were all debating on what convenience store Tanaka purchased his tinsel from," Quinn quietly hums against Chuuya's arm before she catches his eyes again, a softness in her complacent expression he has never seen before soon replaced by the taunt of a small smirk. "You see how much fun I can have without you?" the words are meant to be light as though it's a small lovers quarrel, but the bite in her tone makes his eyes narrow.

Lovers quarrel.

When Quinn was pushed to attend Tanaka's monthly weapons gala with him, he expected it was an opportunity to introduce a new subordinate to the world of the underground like a mafia debutante. Things changed, however, when Kouyou wrote in her RSVP under another name, ordered a haircut, and a selection of dresses that even made Quinn gag over how out of character it was.

According to Mori, they were going with the concealment route on her identity. If people still thought she was Juno they would use that to their advantage in whatever capacity they could, but no one outside of the Mafia was to know the existence of Quinn Machada. That was a name to someone that did not exist with a profile that was almost like every other Yokohama teen. Instead, she was to exist as Eriko Ogura (a name that made her giggle for whatever fictional reasons Chuuya did not want to understand), an American-Japanese citizen who was the only public affair to Port Mafia executive Chuuya Nakahara, though ignorant to his occupational title.

Needless to say, they both hated the idea, but the minute Chuuya suggested she was unable to hold a cover even that basic all arguments stopped. And now here she was, at his side and completely transformed from her personality to her physicality, holding a conversation with Yokohama's most powerful news mogul in a new haircut and color restored to the bright pink she normally worked so hard to cover up.

Chuuya would never say this out loud, but he wildly underestimated her.

"Fun without me?" he raises an eyebrow ghosting her last thought, deciding to play into the genre of the false quarrel that made him retrace his thoughts "Whose invitation got you through the door?"

"Hm, if I remember correctly I got through the door on my own," with her free hand Quinn brings two fingers to her lips as a crease formed between her eyebrows.

Chuuya's own eyes narrow. "Remind me to ask you about that," it's less of a question than a command, and for a second he thinks he sees her mouth a "yes sir" but another laugh breaks his concentration. _Just what is so god damn funny?_

"Remember when we were like that?" the wife, Yori he believes, coos to her husband who still eyes Chuuya like a motionless fly on the wall.

"Young and witty?"  
"Yes, but more importantly, _young_ ,"  
"Ah, when we were this young we weren't coming to ventures like this,"  
"No, it's actually almost out of place!"

The two laugh again and Chuuya thinks he can feel his gag reflex throb. He is a man of respect for his superiors and elders, but the falsity of the wealthy puppet masters who think themselves so important… Kouyou would not appreciate his immediate scorn.

"Since we're so _young_ I believe just standing here is no good," Quinn cuts through the dry conversation enough to even turn Chuuya's own head "It's been lovely speaking to you but Chuuya is about to ask me to dance and I will ecstatically accept."

Chuuya blinks at the out of character forwardness. "I will?"  
"I sure hope so."

She's already standing up straight, promising Sakurai's wife she will get into contact for them to attend a family dinner and spinning herself out of Chuuya's hold to pull him away from the tucked corner out of the lights and towards the open floor with the band. He's sure he properly excused himself but he can't entirely remember as with her pull passing a plethora of Yokohama underground members greetings are passed, but they're not for him. An organ handler tells Eriko good luck on the dance floor, an artillery specialist gives her a polite hello, and a man responsible for dissolving bodies in acid that are not to be found salutes her and tells Ms. Ogura to have a good evening.

 _Just how early did she get here?_

Chuuya doesn't get to ask as they make their way amidst the crowds of already dancing couples. Like in a professional hold, one hand lays at his shoulder while the other intertwine with his, his free hand resting at her waist pulling her in closer as they begin to step and sway to the slow tune of the band behind them.

"What, no room for Jesus?" she asks under her breath when he brings their bodies closer and being the first Quinn-like thing said to him that night makes a small smile creep at the edges of his lips with a quiet laugh.

Chuuya decides not to speak for a few seconds in order to take her in. Though he's already come to terms with the black dress and change of hair Kouyou was undoubtedly behind, he watches as her eyes flicker around the room scanning its contents from people to exits just the way he did before, though if he wasn't looking he wouldn't have known. She'd just be blinking, maybe a bit curious or nervous which is always understood at a party like this. He's just about to ask how she's survived this long when she speaks in his place.

"What's your beef?" Quinn's voice no longer has the same edge it did five seconds ago and Chuuya has to refrain from thinking how impressed he is with the change despite her hold still standing.

"My _what_?" he asks, smile still on his lips but now a bit truer as he refrains from letting out another light laugh at the word.

"Beef with Sakurai, you've clearly crossed paths before,"

Chuuya gives Quinn a twirl before pulling her closer into him than before and trailing his hand further into her back. In the midst of dropping her facade, he hears her take a sharp inhale at the closeness of their bodies, at the heat of his breath on the nape of her neck, yet her heartbeat is steady against his as they continue to sway.

"Sakurai owns all the news outlets in Yokohama, he always has someone tailing Mori Corp for something like it'll be breaking news that we're the HQ for the mafia."  
"And he hates you because you're the king of covering your trail."  
"Someones thinking on their toes,"

She stutters something under her breath like an attempt to combat his words before humming instead. "So why is he here if he's Mr. Good Business?"

"It's because he's Mr. Good Business," across the room Chuuya's eyes meet the very man they're discussing, and at the oddly proud grin on Sakurai's face across the room Chuuya wants to scowl, though luckily he hides the expression as he slowly drops his lips against the skin at Quinn's neck under her ear. Here he feels her heart begin to race as the pulse is against his lips, but his focus is on Sakurai whose own grin falls at the sight of the action, and still she sways against him.

"Sakurai has half the black market in his pockets," he continues against her skin, eyes taking in the rest of the figures in the room that have decided to focus on them "if they give him a story or services he gives them immunity from the law."

"Why not try and cut a deal with him then?"  
"Why do you think?"

Done taking in the current stance of the room for himself, he pulls back from her neck to watch her thoughtful expression, a crease at her forehead as fingers slowly rub themselves together at their hold on his shoulder.

"Because you don't want a deal, you just want to absorb him."

Chuuya nearly stops his steps at the words, and seeing his sudden shift makes her shake her head as though to excuse what she just said.

But the idea already hatched in his head.

"Why did you think we would 'absorb' him?" he goes with her choice of words watching as a small series of flustered expressions crosses her face, wondering how questioning her thought process was more embarrassing to her than physical touch.

"You just said he has black market ties with immunity handouts, and as Mr. Good Business wouldn't you want to have his business rather than combat it?"

 _That's a good point_ , but the thought is not one he would share aloud giving them more silence to dance through. "When did you get here?" Chuuya finally asks his real burning question, and as it falls he sees a wide grin spread across her face framed by rosy cheeks.

"Kouyou thought it best if I came with enough time to mingle."  
"If you were there when I was going to pick you up, we would have."  
" _Alone_ , Chuuya,"

Her emphasis makes him scoff.

"You're serious about this then."

Quinn's smile fades.

"As serious as you are against it." there's a heaviness to her voice, but it's emotionless enough to come across as deadpan, almost filled with authority, and for the next few steps he almost feels as though she's taken the lead for the dance.

"And you understand why I'm against this?"  
"Because you can't trust me, because you think I'm unable to do any public work without scorning the Port Mafia name—is any of this right?" she says it like a joke and if her voice were any louder or further from the confines of his ear he would have found a way to chastise her within public bounds.

"Close, but not quite," he leads their sway to the outer skirts of the dancing group drawing their eyes up to the lights on the ceiling, nearly blinding but spaced out enough that they surround the pillars at every corner. "How many security cameras did you count when you came in?"

"Fourteen in public sight including immediate exteriors, there's probably at least five more at the ends of every hallway outside of this main room—,"  
"Wrong."  
"What?"  
"I said wrong."

"I heard you I just can't believe you." Quinn drops her arm from her hold at his shoulder as they've fully stepped away from the sanctioned dance floor, though when she steps back she feigns a laugh while waving to what he assumes was a passing attendee that caught her eye. Popping the bubble of personal space again she steps back towards Chuuya to gently tug on his suit jacket bringing him towards an empty buffet on a far wall of the room, a plausible space for their heads to be ducked for the next few seconds, though he bets her interest in the food is, unlike the rest of her that night, anything but fake.

"Look at the security around the room, what are they all wearing?" Chuuya ignores her huff of annoyance as she hands him a tiny plate with some kind of fish on it, the cut design too intricate to be catered sushi but the rawness suggesting otherwise. Taking and eating her own, Quinn looks around the room again as casual as someone staring off into space before handing Chuuya her empty plate and taking his still filled one.

"Black suit, black tie, not sure how they can move in them without tearing the seams."  
"And on their jackets?"

She opens her mouth to retort but immediately stops, popping another piece of food in there instead. She wasn't wrong about their blacked-out attire and questioning their fighting functionality, but on the lapel of every jacket was a small pin with a line art of a bird, Tanaka's beloved Plover to which he stamps on all his products with its feet crossing perpendicular like most religious iconography he finds himself obsessed with.

"There's cameras on the pins," it's like she's stating the obvious but he refrains from telling her so and basks in his already established rightness within the few seconds of silence before bringing himself down to whisper in her ear again.

"Now do you understand why I'm against _this_ ," he expected to find her embarrassed again, but out of the corner of his eye he can see her own twitch and the color dissipate into the black of her pupil; a telltale sign of anger.

Slowly, Quinn puts down her plate.

"I did not squeeze myself into this dress for you to convince me what I can and cannot do, Nakahara," despite the choice in name there is no formality with it in her voice.

"What happened to always doing what was expected of you, huh?" choosing her own words to use against her he waits to see what kind of irate response could be waiting for him amidst this ultimately foreign territory, and when she turns to face him Chuuya is suddenly overcome with a sickness in his stomach at the dead stare she gives him for less than a second before a grin sets itself between rouged cheeks and her eyes close with a quiet giggle, a physical ritual he remembers in softer contexts with a harsher person.

"Not everything that's expected of me complies with your own opinions, Chuuya," he's not sure if her words are a threat as they come with another light laugh before she pops another piece of food in her mouth and wipes her hand on the table cloth in front of her muttering quietly "now if you excuse me, I have work to do," before setting off into the opposite direction calling an organ smugglers name as she does so.

Chuuya still stands at the buffet, a little sick, a little confused, but most of all ardently impressed. She did seem serious, and aside from the lapels, she was prepared.

And really, in a place where no one could recognize her as Port Mafia affiliates Quinn Machada or Juno Masamoto, what could possibly go wrong?

* * *

Once she was recognized as Juno, things began to go horribly wrong.

Thankfully it wasn't in public or else Chuuya would have never forgiven her nor let her live the failure down, but as he was completely unaware to her "work" outside of mingling with Yokohama black-market elite he would hopefully never hear about this little fuck-up of hers.

Yet Quinn stands at gunpoint in a concrete basement floors beneath the earth she danced on not an hour ago in considerable desperate need of the executives help.

This is where the movie would freeze the frame and have the protagonist do a voiceover of "you're probably wondering how I got into this mess in the first place".

Well, you're probably wondering how she got into this mess in the first place.

During the time in which she was poked, prodded, smothered, and restructured to be Chuuya's date, Quinn was also receiving espionage training that was not unlike the movies. Her handy lipstick was actually a small bomb meant to destroy the plumbing so she could draw guards away from the opposite end of the house; her overpriced sunglasses helped her mask her appearance to biometric scanners when venturing further into the house, and her earrings, when left on the floor, serves as scramblers for the cameras so no one would know she left the main hall.

 _"_ _You can gather, interpret, and keep as much information as you can, but what use is that if you're seen?"_ Kouyou's voice is still smooth as it plays from memory before outlining her real job, the simple task of copying Tanaka's private hard drive. It made sense—why continue to be degraded by the middle man when they could just buy from the source eliminating him as both a weak spot and a competitor? It was a job that ironically could have been done in her sleep, and thanks to a series of lessons beyond standing straight from the female executive, she was closer than ever to retrieving what she needed and returning to the sushi bar until the door to Tanaka's office was slammed open revealing the host himself on the other side.

 _Whoops._

"Ms. Ogura, what are you doing down here?" his trademark silver suit looked dull in the lack of light of his basement office, a mere grey that refused to sparkle against his golden hair disheveled likely from running to catch her 'in the act' as shown by the rest of his overly tense stance.

Quinn merely clears her throat. "Just… Checking my email," her last two brain cells groan at the words that come from her mouth, and she's ready to take the computer monitor and throw it at his head in a moments notice until the clench of his jaw is loosened as is the rest of the tension that held his body straight.

Tanaka stuffs his hands in his pants after gesturing to one of the guards that came with him to come inside, and as he did the door closed with a groan like she was being locked in a submarine.

"You can drop the act, Juno, we're all friends here."

 _Ah, yes, that one._ Quinn feels like punching herself in the face in order to get the other girls attention, but nothing clouds as nothing comes over her, and she's left like a poorly trained receptionist telling every caller "please hold" before hanging up on them.

"Excuse me?" she decided to take the dumb route, the "I'm not who you think I am" route, but the insinuation that she was lying more than she already was seemed to upset him, and with an unfortunate lack of slow-motion Tanaka grabbed the gun of the guard behind him and fired two shots into the computer in front of her before walking across the room and hovering the hot steel inches from her face. The only thing between them now the desk at her waist as smoke from the damaged machine fills the air in the room.

"Don't play dumb," the stress is back as his hold on the gun is anything but steady, and though she wants to stare cross-eyed at the barrel close to her forehead and scream, with every breath she musters the strength to keep her expression passive and her eyes on the wild ones in front of her as he continues on in some tirade about how she "conned him out of all his assets" and "ought to cough up what she owes him before it doubles" with words slurring as much as his hand wavered in front of her.

Was this just him being a drunk or just him being angry? From what Quinn was told, Tanaka was volatile in the smallest of ways and preferred to battle from the comfort of his home hence his bunker-like basement. A war profiteer who hated the concept, a religious man who scorned the west for the damage they did to the soul of his homeland. This stuttering man in front of her, while seemingly not a threat so long as she focused on the defensive moves Dazai taught her and relied on her unreasonable healing, was nothing like the file she was forced to memorize, from the dull of his suit to his suggested partnership with a Port Mafia rebel.

Quinn was still trying to put the pieces together of what was going on and (more importantly) how to get out with what little information she could grab before he damaged the computer until Tanaka reached a coherent end to his tirade.

"I didn't think Shinichi Hoshi's bitch was smart enough to parade with Port Mafia executives under a false name," something must have shown in her face at the name because it made him suddenly bellow a laugh "you thought a haircut and some bad contact lenses would really put me off the scent?"

There it was, the name she's been forcing herself to remember. Combing and reciting memories without losing her ground to this world brought her nothing, but now it was dropped in a situation that shouldn't compare.

 _Shinichi Hoshi, rhymes with Yoshi._

"I'm not with Nichi anymore," as she speaks her hands slowly raise to show a lack of arms, hoping the gesture with the use of the nickname might calm him enough to let her reassess the situation. Technically, she should be able to do that now, but with her heart racing along with her mind Quinn feels like she's grasping at even more straws.

Especially as Tanaka laughs, an empty cackle that makes him lower the gun a bit and tilt his head to the side.

"How long is he going to let you remember that?" there's a sadness to his voice like he regrets to inform her of the fact, but the emotion is loss as he takes a step forward and fully presses the gun to her head.

The heat stings against her skin, but there's no twitch nor sign of pain as it continues to heal over and over again at the prolonged contact. It's a nuisance.

"Where's the money?"  
"I'd tell you if I knew."  
"I believe that, so wheres Hoshi,"  
 _Fuck if she knew._ "I told you I'm not with him—,"

"Don't lie to me!" he's not yelling but still he's shaking, and the fear that tumbles his body is all so apparent to her now, so she stands and listens, and swallows whenever his finger hovers too close to the trigger "If you're in the executives pockets there's no way he would leave you alone, so tell me where he is, or where you hid the money, and we could all go back to the way it was."

"I don't know where the money is, _I swear_ ," her emphasis is in a whisper, and she sees him ready to start another tirade telling her to 'stop with the bullshit' until she goes on "the executives have exhausted so much to look for it, they've torn apart my home, the docks, and probably Nichi's last location and have come up with nothing." slowly her hand comes to his to lower the gun, and with a shaky breath he complies.

"They know _nothing_ ," Quinn looks to the guard by the door, now unarmed thanks to Tanaka but still bulging with muscles that could snap her like a twig if she decided to run, so she keeps talking as she continues to slide his hand off the gun "I know nothing _,_ and killing me won't change that, but helping me might."

Finally, his hand drops the gun, and she slides it to the corner of the desk close enough for her to reach.

"I've found that trusting you doesn't normally work out." he laughs in front of her, tugging at his tie and making his way to her on the other side of his desk.

Then he pulls the tie off.  
Then he wraps it around her neck.  
Then the popping sound of gunfire blares in her ears, and Quinn smells blood.

The gun is gone from the table and the tie has slipped off from her neck. The body weight behind her is no longer there, and when she turns her gaze from the guard ahead of her who still has their gun raised she finds both Tanaka and the tie on the floor. Blood is slowly pooling from a black hole in his head onto the cement floor and into the patterned silk tie. As a lukewarm drop hits her shoulder she brings a finger to her cheek to find that it also splattered to stain her skin.

 _What a mess._

"I know there's no hope for Masamoto to still be in there, but, ah, I just couldn't be the one to kill her," it's only when the muscle by the door speaks that Quinn finds her eyes focused in the room again instead of loss in a haze of needing bleach bleach bleach. The stench was starting to make her sick and reminded her of a dying cow left in a field; flies were not far.

Her eyes lock with the guards own for a short second before speaks into the mic at his ear. He says something about a man down and their location in a rushed breath that she can't hear the details.

But she can hear the gun again.

Luckily, this time there's less of a ringing in her ears.

* * *

You'd think the help would have the decency to stage a coup during a less populated night.

The thought huffed itself in Chuuya's mind as he worked himself through the brawl. Could you even call it a coup when they seemed insistent on attacking everyone in sight, tearing the fabric off dresses and suits alike left and right. The exits were left wide open and a number of attendees made it out in time, but needing to work with these professionals in the future he did have to throw kicks and crush artillery here and there.

By the time he made it out of the building, the budding thought from the start of the night crept to the forefront of his mind: where was Quinn.

He knew he should've done something about the ten pieces of sushi she ate (with her bare hands to Kouyou's future disappointment) and escorted her to the proper bathroom when she said she might be sick, but they knew he had hands to shake and that her presence was ultimately ceremonial. When five minutes became ten he didn't really notice. When ten became twenty he convinced himself she had whisked herself into another odd networking situation. When twenty became thirty all guards seemed to frown like they heard bad news, and the gunfire blared throughout the house.

And he didn't even get a drink.

Thanks to their lack of comms, he was back to her sick concept of trust, the delinquent brutal honesty that seemed to lack any actual honesty. Chuuya had to trust that whatever mess she got herself into she would get herself out of it; he had to trust that whatever chaos just happened left her unscathed.

Ultimately, he trusted that she remembered the emergency extraction point: the car parked about a mile away from the brawl ('party') whose driver waited for Chuuya's instructions only to leave.

When he pulls open the door to the backseat he already clenches his jaw at the assumption that it's empty, but when he sees her already curled up against the far window a surprising relief flushes out the tension.

"It's cold outside—do you mind shutting the door." her voice is surprisingly monotone, and as he steps in and gives the driver directions a memorable smell explains why.

As the car begins to move in the night he looks over her leaning figure, feet folded on the seat beside her as her head rests against the window. Her eyes are closed, and with the black of her dress against the rest of the car she looks like a shadow amongst the nighttime lights of the city, save for a drying crimson stain at her cheek, along her neck, and dropping down her shoulder in small splatters at her bare arm. He's sure if there was more light he would have seen similar stains against the fabric of her dress.

"What happened in the bathroom?" there's a certain judgmental tone in his voice that he can't help but let out amidst his concern. It comes from questions like where was she? Why was she there alone? Who was she with? What did she do? But more importantly, _why isn't she telling him?_

Seconds to minutes tick by and she doesn't answer, eyes still closed and head still rocking against the window to the car at every turn. If she's not really asleep she sure was faking it well, enough to get Chuuya to shrug off his jacket and lay it over her arms, a barrier not only for the cold but for the stains on her skin.

The rest of the car ride Chuuya finds himself watching her sleeping figure, lost in thought. If the two, maybe three hours they spent in that house together reminded him of anything it was that she really was an asset, but it was beyond her theories of fiction. When it came down to it she followed orders as best as someone could in her novice position; she put on the socialite facade and held her ground against people that he would think make her want to faint at sight. Quinn, despite the incapabilities he complained about before arriving, filled her role perfectly and carried out her position as his partner better than other long-standing operatives could.

But there's a gap missing, and he's sure he's not going to have it filled for him.

Chuuya already had a partner who could think on their toes and wear a mask that would make anyone drop their own. He already knew what it was like to put his trust into someone worth having it, someone who knew what orders were to be followed and when. Moreover, he's already had a partner who toyed with their own gaps and their own side missions done without his regard. According to the world, Chuuya has already had the perfect partner, but if it came with the misfortunes and deceit that it did, what would putting a lesser version of that at his side mean? What would pairing him with a, for lack of a better word, shadier figure than most mean to his work?

Reaching the towers, he looks away from the sleeping passenger and out his own window, to the city at the foot of Mori Corp. From where they stand the lights of the populated areas still cast a glow in the background of the nearby buildings all dark. Lights and not, it's a beautiful landscape, one he's vowed to protect as a member of the Port Mafia.

And anyone who stands in his way?  
They aren't there for long.

The car stops. Prepared to reach across and carry Quinn's sleeping figure into the building, Chuuya blinks in surprise when he sees her seated upright, his jacket folded in her lap and her gaze nearly staring holes into the back of the seat in front of her.

"Have the driver take me to the apartment." the words fill the car the moment his fingers touch the doorknob. His head whips to her in response, a crease at his forehead already giving him a headache.

"What are you talking about, the brief is always—,"  
"I'll speak to Mori in the morning."  
"No, you'll speak with him now because he's waited all night and those are his orders."

"Chuuya—," she raises her voice ever so slightly, but it stops, and like it pains her entire body she quickly sucks in a breath to shakily let it loose. But her eyes still stare ahead, plainly glancing at a target, a dead-on gaze that contrasts her trembling figure. He can hear the exhales from her nose now, and altogether her breaths come to say _I can't_.

It's one of the more honest things she's given him.

Chuuya gets out of the car without another word (besides the one he shares with the driver to take Quinn to her desired location). He walks around the tail end of the car preparing a good enough excuse for the boss before the baritone click of a door is heard.

He turns to see her outstretched arms presenting his folded jacket like a pillow for a crown, yet when he grabs it it's by the collar, opening it up and slinging it over his arm without concern for the creases she put in it. He instead uses the moment to hold the door open a few seconds longer catching Quinn's full portrait, stare locked on hers.

Chuuya has always noted the green of her eyes but for the first time he can place the color really isn't there, like it faded into a grey, a dusted jade that was left in improper care. The brightness of her hair with the pale complexion of her skin doesn't even help to make any color pop; even with the pink strands surrounding her cheeks he feels he's looking at a grey scaled body—save for the stains. The stains he itches to reach out to, to watch crumble to ash against his gloved fingertips like he could wipe all physical remnants of whatever happened away.

"Get some rest," he says instead, pushing the car door closed and turning back towards the towers.

He doesn't need to watch her go.

Time passes slowly as he makes his way up the stairs to the entrance of the Mori Corp building, as he scans himself into an elevator at the furthest glass wall of the tower. The ride, too, even as he watches the outside city disappear in a blur feels a bit too endless for his tastes before he gets to the final floor and crosses the hall to the bosses room.

Inside, Mori is enjoying a cup of tea as he watches Elise doodle something directly onto the table next to him, and without looking up he speaks;

"Did Ms. Machada fall ill?" despite the lack of eyes Chuuya still bows before allowing himself to answer, to brief him as he does every major mission, to stand and listen to the way he hums to himself at specific points as new plots undoubtedly hatch in his mind.

"Was it enjoyable, working with her?" Elise giggles as Mori asks this like they know it's something to potentially start a raging fire.

"Actually she performed better than I expected," Chuuya recalls the way she would boisterously laugh with a flair of her hand, and the smooth conversations and natural touches she was able to completely separate from the state she eventually left in, whoever that was supposed to be. "she held the Sakurai's attention for a good amount of time."

"Sakurai?" Mori seemed surprised by this answer, his face crinkling into a nearly confused expression minus a prominent pout.

"She got the point of suggesting we absorb them."

Another laugh fills the room, deeper than Elise's light giggles that echoed before. Mori chuckles, his glass quietly clinks against the table as he puts it back down.

"An old executive suggested the same thing not five years ago," he's amused as he says this, and the insinuation of Dazai's hand in a plan that was brought up again like this doesn't sit well in Chuuya's stomach "we didn't have the proper people at the time to pull it off, but now…" in the moonlight Chuuya can see the edges of the bosses lips curl into a Cheshire grin, not entirely dangerous but still far too happy for the insinuation of the circumstance.

* * *

"You can stop here."  
"The address Executive Nakahara gave is still a ways away—,"  
"Thank you."  
"Wait—!"

Without waiting she opens the car door. The driver is still apprehensive but jerks to a stop. He probably says something about her dress, about how it would be easier for him to just take her home as she asked, but she says she needs some air and waves him off. She should have smiled, but the muscles in her face see no point in moving more than they need to. The dried blood on her skin cracks when she tries to speak anyway; the skin of her cheeks so dry they threatened to bleed on their own.

When the car is out of her sight she still waits, like she considers actually continuing in the direction of her so-called home, but every time she thinks about the still orderly apartment she feels cold and sick.

So she turns down a side street and walks.

It doesn't look like she knows where she's going, and her short heels are eventually in her hand as she comes upon something glowing, lightly, a beacon. At the door she begins a descent down the steep stairs.

The bar is warm, musty. It always is, even though there is no one to take up all the available air. Even now as there is only one body at the counter, one glass served, the air convinces her to feel the room is full, but even the old man who serves drinks is off to the back somewhere. It really is empty.

She sits down next to the only body at the counter and sets her shoes down at the floor. He doesn't look at her but he knows she's there, who she is, and gently he slides his glass in front of her with his pinky finger. She doesn't drink, only stares ahead at a wall of drunken photographs from the past.

"I thought you'd be more excited after your first intelligence job." Dazai's voice is smooth, quiet, a bit listless like he had too much to drink but all the while he sits composed. "Little Quinnie proving herself to the big-bad mafia."  
"Sorry to disappoint."

"Always so concerned with disappointing others," with the words he turns to look at her, and though he expected the fancy dress he wasn't counting on the bloodstains that stood out against the fabric, or the ones that were dotted against her profile. The sight stalls the rest of his sentence; he reaches a hand to her skin and in an abrupt reflex she grabs his bandaged wrist. She doesn't speak, she doesn't turn, but he doesn't need her to.

He brings his hand back down.

"Did you kill him?"  
"No."  
"Who did?"

There's a continued silence, though a light hums somewhere, and out of sight the barkeep is likely messing with new bottles and stocking glasses with quiet clinks here and there. Though it's clear she doesn't want to say anything on the matter, Dazai still questions her.

"What did you see?"  
" _No_."  
"If you don't answer me the one you'll be forced to answer to is Mori, and his ways are a lot less clean."

He hears her swallow. Here is where she would snap back about him demonizing her boss more than he would himself, about how she owed her survival to the man and couldn't even consider saying those things, but they never come, and instead she says the last thing he thought he would hear in the steadiest voice he would never attribute to her.

"I feel nothing."

Her words add to the muster of the bar. She focuses on the photographs.

"I always said I would feel nothing but I thought that was fake. Life is supposed to be… Precious… And you feel so much… And death is… Murder is supposed to be evil… But I was right." she wants to laugh. She can't. "It didn't matter to me. I didn't feel anything other than the urge to mop the mess up. I don't think that would have changed if I got to pull the trigger."

Quinn turns to Dazai who now stares ahead, feigning interest in photographs. "Am I broken?" her question makes him turn, and when he does she sees a memory play in the reds of his eyes, she hears the sounds of too many bullets firing into an already limp body. He should say no, but in the seconds where he would say the word his eye twitches. She turns away first and stares into the glass he pushed in front of her. In the darkness she really can't see her features reflected back to her in the liquid, or the blood on her face, or the bleakness in her eyes. It's just a shadow, devoid.

"Osamu…" her voice makes ripples in the glass despite her quiet tone. "I want to go home." neither of them move, and the silence melts into the warmth of the bar to cover them both.

Her shoulders are soon covered, but not by the quiet; Dazai's coat hangs over her bare frame, the tan fabric covering the stains that fell from her neck to the side of her dress. It reminds her of her own skin even if it's darker than the complexion she wears now, and the memory of her real skin comforts her and gives her the energy to stand as guided by hand delicately sitting at her waist.

"Come." his lips ghost her ear, voice still smooth, still quiet. "Let's go clean you up."

* * *

 _ **a/n ahead**_

to be honest i have been writing this chapter since february so the constant shift in voice and overall quality comes from me writing this in parts and changing things without checking. i feel like that one clip of the girl who cut her own bangs and tells her mom "itll be okay" on repeat. i am the girl and this fic is the hair, but its cool because this chapter is (unnecessarily) dense, and boy are things only bound to get interesting from here.

speaking of february, i apologize for lying when i said i was going to update in a week. clearly that is not the case, and as the semester starts back up i bet that will only further not be the case, so my attempted olive branch is a once a month update? i definitely want to finish this by the end of the year and the way these next few drafts are going it seems like that's more than doable, but the chapters seem to be longer than the drabbles i initially anticipated for when i absentmindedly created this fic.

exciting things, really, and i'm so thankful for everyone whose kept on this journey with me and shown their loves in follows, comments, and faves. y'all are the real mvps.

stay cool, stay safe, stay sassy, jackie


	16. Quinn Works for Kunikida!

Chocolate… It cant even begin to describe the rich color of the locks she could vividly remember, because they weren't just brown and they weren't just dark. They were really the perfect blend between lights and darks with hints of red undertones that could sparkle in the fluorescent light of a bathroom, like a volcano that has just erupted with molten lava slowly cooling into off black tones as it pools against sand. It's a color that couldn't be provided by professional stylists, boxed dyes, and even wigs no matter how hard she would search.

"Admit it, you're in love with me." Dazai's voice interrupts the ode she was compiling as she stared at his hair, and in place of an irritated blush she swivels her head away from his face on the palm of her hand it was resting on.

"Opposite, actually," Quinn now focuses on the peeling brown paint on his front door. It's extremely light compared to his and her own old hair but it's still a shade that sheer "shit" cannot describe. "It's easier to swallow this down when looking at something worse off," she continues with an exhale, and her hand falls into her lap as the other grabs another spoonful of the poorly concocted rice porridge at her feet.

She's not sure why she keeps allowing him to make her breakfast. It's always disgusting, or just a bit off that she wants to gag. Most times in their night to day excursions and sparring sessions, she slips away before she even considers her first meal of the day. Last night she let her guard down. Last night she sat at the foot of his futon as he wiped the last bits of blood from her skin, both of them waiting for her to cry but not sparing a word as nothing came out.

Last night she fucked up.

"What are you going to tell them?" it's disgusting how he can read her mind, and she really sees the antagonistic appeal some manage to get when he does so.

"Exactly what happened." there's no room for extra breaths or twistable comments or even the slight twitch she feels forcing her fist to clench when he talks. She barely has the time to still sit here, debating another spoonful of this horrendous breakfast in front of her.

"Which was…?" his voice beckons her gaze upwards but she can't do it. Quinn stares into the rice bowl like it was the last thing keeping her together. And then her spoon turns backwards, and in the dull of the silver she can see the abstract reflection staring back at her. No chocolate.

 _"Tanaka recognized Juno and called out her work with the Port Mafia. He first fired into the monitor and then tried to kill her, er, me, before his own security shot him down and then shot themself."_

Quinn is more animated when she recites the same story in the quiet of Mori's office not an hour later. She can't even recall her pensive stare into the poor excuse for a reflection on silverware.

"Did he say anything before he offed himself?" Chuuya speaks up from his spot next to her, the two of them standing in front of the seated boss whose closed eyes could almost be considered asleep.

"He said he didn't want to be the one to kill me even if Juno still wasn't 'in there', which is why I don't think Juno was explicitly working for Tanaka, especially if this Hoshi character was her so called handler." if Quinn was quicker she would have seen the speed at which Mori had opened his eyes at the statement, no particular part. It was like it all awoken something in him, like he regained a lost train of thought.

She turns towards him when he blinks. Mori spares no reaction, so she goes on.

"I've been keeping track of the shipments Juno was responsible for handling and in all of them there are a number of crates unaccounted for when compared to the distributers ledger, but it's minute enough each time that it almost seems like a fluke on their part. I think Juno and whatever group Hoshi built was working with Tanaka to steal back any weaponry he supposedly sold you and thats how she eventually took from the shipping profits," she was ready to pull out a stowed thumb drive of it all she compiled from her newly recovered FanFiction theories when she hears a tired sigh, and see's it come from the bosses open mouth and hunched shoulders.

"What do you plan to do about this information?" he seemed bored by her words, and Quinn feels her lips physically curl downwards.

"I want to do what I said I would when I got here: help you regain your losses. If I can just get more information on this Hoshi person—,"  
"Request denied. I want you to focus on things that matter for our future successes, not linger in the past." a white glove is seen in a small wave as Mori physically shrugs off her suggestion, fingers slowly curling themselves inward to the palm of his hand before he drops it onto the table in a near tiresome effort.

She almost stutters, mouth open and close to the floor as she spares a quick glance at Chuuya who has now turned his gaze outside the window, like any involvement in this interaction is far out of his jurisdiction. "Is this not relevant for the future? Don't you want what's rightfully yours returned?"

"I have the means to get that and more now thanks to you, you should be proud."  
"Boss, there still might be threads of whatever group Juno was apart of running around Yokohama trying to rebuild itself—,"

"And I have already denied you the ability to look into it." it's just the slightest in decibels but Mori's voice was raised, still deep but enough to take just more space within the room. "I advise you not to antagonize me any further,"

Quinn feels the need to step back and take a deep breath, though she only straightens her stance to guide her gaze away from the one that threatens to burn her to ash. "I meant no disrespect, sir," she's not sure if she means it this time, and for the first time she could remember, Quinn staunchly feels the need to fight all authority for her own selfish needs.

"Good," Mori's voice is lax again and she can hear the small knock of his back leaning further into his chair "because your idea to absorb Sakurai News is much more important to us than chasing an already dead ghost."

"My wha—?" the thick metal blinds are already beginning to fall over the grand windows on the side of the room, and in her stuttering peripheral Quinn watches as Chuuya disappears into the darkness along with the boss. If she was following 'fake it till you make it', this was sure a poor result.

Lights come up from the back of Mori's desk bringing everyone else into view. Plastered on the new screen are the bright passport photos of the Sakurai family; Takahiro is frowning in his picture, his short cut hair blended with his large frame that was still evident in the photograph reminding her of an unenthused military man. His wife, Yori, is the opposite, and shares the slightest cat like grin hidden under her long midnight hair that screams upper class.

At the end of these images now on the wall lies their progeny, Mai Sakurai. Though her photo is as bland as her fathers there are many hidden beneath it in an electronic stack, a series of photos grabbed from her online presence from posed outfits to CCTV grabs of her leaving a corner store. In each there is color, in her clothes, in the background, and most especially her hair. It changes, it's different, and Quinn wonders if her and Juno would have been on the same pink page at one point.

When Quinn looks back down to begrudgingly take in Mori's next orders, she's stuck in her silence as she merely sees the way the light reflects off of the canines exposed in his gruesome smile. His skin and bone both as sharp as a knife, and she's reminded how easily he can cut her.

* * *

The elevator is slow, which is odd considering the silence that weighs it down even further. Her eyes seem consumed with reaching the ground as she stares into the tile floor to will them there, but they've only past four floors.

Chuuya stands against the silver wall by the doors watching as gears turn in unknown directions in the girls head in front of him. She had gone from surprising adamance to complete silence with one breath in the office, but he heard it hitch, and he could place the stench of fear anywhere.

"Mori's letting you take on a lot, huh?" his piss attempt at a conversation is met with silence, Quinn's eyes still watching the tile. Surprisingly enough her hands are nowhere near her face, yet where they are clutching the bar at her back he can see how she still reflexively picks at the skin. Old habits never do die.

He turns away and ops for the view. Maybe another few floors passed but he couldn't tell.

"Is it nice," he hears her speak and it's almost sudden, his eyes flash back to her "working with Kouyou?" she adds when he does, though it's not as though she's watching him either, or maybe she's found his reflection in the floor.

"Kouyou and I definitely have a different relationship than you two ever could."  
"Why? You don't think she looks forward to making me her doll again?"

She quietly laughs at herself. Chuuya does not. They fall back into silence. He didn't even answer her question, but the concept of the doll poked another.

"I'm surprised you didn't try and re-dye your hair already." he's not sure where in the sentence but he noticed her tick, a twitch, a movement away from him that made the fear ten times more potent.

"I had other things to deal with," the words are mumbles, like they're lost in her head, like they're stuck in a memory.

Months ago he probably could have placed some kind of classic manufactured scene it was associated with; the normal family life that she had known so well as an experience he amongst others in the mafia would never know something so basic to his understanding of her that it's traditionalism made everything make sense.

Now she's joking about being made a doll, but the laughter that came with it was twisted with a complete lack of care for the consequences.

"When was the last time you slept?" Chuuya wasn't sure if his question was laced with curiosity or concern, but whatever it was it made her look at him again with a completely confused face, almost offended even.

"Last night, what, you think I'm an insomniac now?"  
"No, not—," he scoffs, pinching the bridge of his nose "Not normal sleep, the whole Juno-comatose thing."

Quinn still wears the same taken-aback expression like she's frozen, but her eye twitches at Juno's name, and the silence that held for so many floors is now thoroughly cracked.

"You didn't trust me in the beginning because you thought I was lying, right?" it's a direct question but she doesn't give him the opportunity to answer. "You don't trust the idea of Juno running rampant the most, especially since you were there to put her down."

"She wasn't a _dog_ ," he interjects, eyes narrowing at her choice of words but Quinn just continues with a wave of her hand.

"And now that we know she was part of a giant conspiracy that goes beyond money funneling and beyond the mafia, _you're_ willing to be put down like a dog and pretend to be my sugar daddy so you guys can control _one_ more outlet that hasn't actually impacted your financial successes or political failures in the past year and probably hasn't in the years before this, and I know this because I'm the one who makes all the spreadsheets you executives use and the moment I get the chance to do something cooler than spreadsheets it doesn't actually mean anything."

She wasn't yelling; Chuuya considered her voice surprisingly level headed for the words she spewed so quickly and with such animation he almost felt reminiscent to an old elevator ride that had her avoiding him for weeks.

Weeks, months, years.

"It's been a year?" he says of the fleeting word in her tirade, of all the things she said that shook him up. Between her insult, what he assumed was a lewd compliment, and her career plans, it all came together, and finally he felt like he could understand her again. The monotone car ride, the on-edge atmosphere with the boss, and the underlying fear that somehow settled as she stood still.

Her expression drops, and the elevator stops at the lobby. When the doors open, Chuuya waits for her to move, and when she finally smooths her hands on the legs of her pants before stepping out he follows.

In more silence they make their way out of the central tower, out of the darkness of the granite clad walls and into the sunlight the tinted windows downplayed in the rest of the building. Neither of them squint, but Quinn stops her steps at the top of the concrete staircase as though she was unsure what stepping down really meant.

"Four more days." her eyes are back on the floor, or maybe the bottom step. He's not sure what she's looking at, but under the shade of the tower the green of her eyes is dark, and he almost can't see the color. "I keep thinking that this is a fluke and that one morning I'll be back in class, or at work, or with my family and just…" _Forget_.

Forget is the word she doesn't say.

Chuuya doesn't know that.

"If you ask me, you'll still be in class when you're with Kouyou, and you're still at work with the budget and the intelligence plans, and…"  
"Let me guess—I'm with family when I'm with the mafia?"

Chuuya grins. "Wow, you really think of us that way? Isn't that kind."

With a scoff she finally looks him in the eye again, squinting a bit like she's searching for the insincerity of his comment that was supposed to be on the surface.

Unfortunately for the both of them, there is none.

Quinn looks back at the streets that wait for them at the foot of the stairs, and with loud sigh she says the one thing Chuuya would not have expected to leave a weight in his stomach before she walked away.

 _"The mafia was a family for Juno too."_

* * *

Mai Sakurai is a meddlesome girl who insists on knowing everyones business yet sharing none of hers. She has an excellent taste in clothes, Yokohama nightlife, and can control a man with nothing but her pinky finger if she really needed to. She is utterly insufferable, and Quinn wonders why she still finds her so fascinating to be around.

Was it the confidence she exuded when threatening to put a man out of business because he asked that she pay for her meal? Was it the small glint in her eyes when she looked at her own reflection in a window and blew herself a kiss?

Maybe it was the way the edges of her lips curled into a cheshire grin she only associated with the danger of obscenely tall brunettes, her own hair falling between her eyes to hide a dangerous glint or even the slightest flicker of emotion should the situation call for it. Mai was like everything Quinn knew and do much more.

Higuchi often joked that she was falling in love with her, if not becoming her, but there wasn't much she could use to argue against the gunslingers points. Daily, now, she syphoned all her strength of personality into the Eriko persona that kept her social in a room full of Yokohama's most well dressed deplorables, but keeping herself alive to the daughter of a media mogul like Sakurai seemed increasingly harder. Mai was incredibly paranoid of those around her, and rightfully so, but that also meant she was particular of those she kept around so Quinn had to learn to be a commodity to her unlike any other schoolgirl. Playing the role of the completely naive girlfriend to villainous Port Mafia executive only gave her so much; Chuuya wasn't there all the time, so she learned to push her buttons (to Kouyou's discretion) and to speak with no words at all when necessary at opposite ends of a lecture hall.

 _A lecture hall…_ Ultimately, Higuchi was wrong in saying that Quinn was in love with the chase of the Sakurai spawn; she was in love with getting a piece of her life back. Becoming a student again provided Quinn with one of the last pieces of normalcy she truly missed, and if it wasn't the mundane of it all it was the structure that appealed to her. Though she did have to wake up for work every day in the towers, she could get away with doing nothing for a whole week before being hit with a time-crunch assignment, numbers or intelligence. Now she had a formulaic structure for all her days; by nine she had to be ready to meet Mai for coffee, by ten they would be in their first class, and with some separation in between she would need to be ready by two in the afternoon for her semi-linner phase.

By eight in the morning, Quinn would be excitedly organizing her notebooks for the day next to the perfectly folded set of clothes plus whatever she needed to hijack Mai's life in the minimalist way possible. Once that meant setting up a burner to copy her entire smartphone, another was a stomach tracker to be sure she was with her father at dinner one school night while Quinn went with a team to bug her family home.

Sure, work was work, but it wasn't school.

Quinn never expected such a thought to cross her mind in her entire life, but it was a recurring one in the past year. The ADA, of all places, brought it to the forefront.

Picture: a freshly groomed Quinn who has finally learned how the fashion of chain belts work

comes into the fourth floor office with a physics textbook from the library to prove a point to an insufferable man named Dazai. Dazai gets sidetracked by the concept of centrifugal force and decides to prove an already proven theory that requires himself, his rolling desk chair, and Atsushi to transform his legs. Smashcut to about seventeen minutes later when Kunikida walks into the office to see lines of fire surrounded by broken glass and chipped bricks leading to a giant hole on the side of the agency building. Quinn is hidden behind a desk and refuses to tell the stern man anything that happened, and though he fixes the situation while pulling in a Dazai who dangles in the desk chair from surrounding electric wires outside anticipating electrocution, Kunikida decides that the damage has been caused by association from her and so she is responsible for helping the agency in repairs.

Quinn is now an agency receptionist because she enabled stupidity. She makes no pay and somehow works about thirty hours a week. She has been employed by the mafia longer than this yet this occupation really feels as such, and so it tires her, bores her, and reminds her that when the day is done she still has to go and do _work_.

The thought makes her groan quietly to herself as she steps further into town with a chattering Mai at her side complaining about the lack of value in their Yokohama university lectures. The further out they are from their school the closer she gets to her working hours. It's not unlike her old home job at the library, but the sinking boredom where she could otherwise be entertained or performing espionage isn't ideal.

"You're not talking." Mai's statement is no longer in the high pitched voice she reserves for well thought out tirades on the materialistic things she says she loves two seconds later. It makes Quinn uncomfortable—so she rolls her eyes.

"I'm sorry I thought it was your turn to speak, your majesty," the title is said with a careless flair and a flick of her hand as they cross the street. Only when they make it to the other side does Mai let out the lightest of laughs.

"Speaking of royalty, you do realize your boyfriend is sometimes called the king of the Yokohama underworld, right?"

Quinn pinches the bridge of her nose. "He's legit, Mai, just leave it alone."

In a confused reflex, Mai's lips push into her face making her look like a frog. "You don't find it weird that he wears all black and owns a flip phone?"

"A lot of people own flip phones, it's vintage."  
"It's criminal behavior."  
"No, it's shit gossip."

And oh how Mai loves her gossip, though maybe it was just the paranoia that comes with being the daughter of one of Yokohama's wealthiest man, strongest man, most targeted man.

They always knew having Quinn play the part of a new-money arm piece to Chuuya would be difficult, but nothing made it more difficult than playing the piece that knows nothing who is to befriend the girl that knows everything. It was one thing to effortlessly lie at a party where everyone was required to keep their cool, it's another when you're constantly being poked and prodded.

The Sakurai's loved to prod. They probably ran on the sheer chaos of the blood of the wounds they opened alone.

Which was why when Quinn heard the smooth voice that sent an itch down her back, her body went into overdrive.

"What's shit gossip?" Dazai asks, suddenly standing in their tracks on the sidewalk and catching Mai's full attention with his wide shit eating grin.

"Excuse me? Were we talking to you?" she feigns disgust though steps close enough to him that Quinn wonders if she could just call him a hobo and get away with it on the smell alone, but it's done with a smile of her own, though this one is only devilish in its intrigue.

"No, but I needed to say something to get your attention." he's awfully close to her now, and even though she was scared for her cover, Quinn couldn't help but bring a hand to her face and groan at his ridiculous line completed with the aired addition of his name.

"Sir, she has a boyfriend," she decides to say as she puts a hand on her shoulder to suggest pulling her back, though neither of them move from one another; the only sign that she gained their attention comes from Dazai who raises an eyebrow.

" _Sir?_ You've never called me sir before,"

Quinn wants to punch him.

"You know him?" Mai pays attention to her again and she hates it, but she has a half assed alcoholism based excuse on her lips before Dazai laughs and beats her to it.

 _"Know me? I'm her boss at the Armed Detective Agency,"_

Mai squints an eye. "Agency? You never told me you worked at the agency."

Quinn's mouth is still open with intent to respond but no words come out. "Ah," she starts after a few seconds of each of them looking at her "I don't really like to advertise it since Chuuya disapproves." _Well she's not wrong._

"Chuuya?" Dazai and Mai speak the mans name in unison, though Dazai seems ready to speak more on the man before Quinn rushes before him.

"Yeah, well, he doesn't like the idea of me working on top of school and, you know, personal things."

No one speaks for a few seconds, and it's enough to make Dazai laugh. It's loud, boisterous, and would make anyone want to smile with him.

She wants to gag.

"Of course he would think that, any relationship with that hat-rack would be work alone, you must be exhausted."

Quinn feels it's premature to sigh in relief as Mai laughs. "Hat-rack, thats a good one. And how do you know Chuuya if you're all tied up at the agency?" Dazai stops laughing at her question, and the smile contorts.

"It's a small city. Everyone knows everyone, really."

Quinn tries to not think about how ominous that sounded, or the way he stared at her when he spoke.

Groups of people pass them by so she coughs to clear the air.

"Right, well, this was fun and I'll be in today to do the work thing but Mai and I were about to grab lunch so—,"  
"We would love for you to join us!" Mai smiles, Quinn frowns.

"We really wouldn't." working her fingers between the folds of her clothes, Quinn gives Mai a harsh pinch to grab her attention. Instead of saying "ow" as an unrefined girl would she gives her an angered side eye that Quinn hopes wouldn't last once it found her own needy expression. If Mai loved anything about anyone it was being able to swoop in and take advantage of someone in need, and right now she needed to be taken advantage of by any means necessary.

It's what Quinn remembers clearly when they're sitting in an empty cafe minutes later, eyes staring into the rising steam from the cup in front of her willing the growing issue to just go away when Mai brings up a critical question.

"Why do you _really_ not want Chuuya to know about you and the agency?" across from her, Mai takes a dangerous sip from her tea but she watches the girl nearly zone out in front of her, too many thoughts visible crossing her mind at once. Quinn never saw the issue with thinking, but whenever she stares spaced out like that it only concerns her.

What answer could she give? What answer made sense? Because he would kill her isn't enough because at this point she's not even sure if that would be true. Maybe now he could understand why she needed a life outside the mafia, albeit with their greatest foe. Maybe now he could see why she needed a pure thinker like Dazai on her side when things got rough, even though he was the one who left a searing angry hole in his chest time and time again. Maybe they've reached a point where she can explain herself without having to say too much, without having to be too much of a certain kind of person that she had to work to convince him. Maybe he was her partner now, and maybe she just needed to let all hell break loose and trust her partner.

She feels pressure form between her eyes as the skin creases and she nearly squints. _Did she really just call Chuuya her partner?_ And even though she thought it, _was it true for him?_

Quinn pictures the smile on his face when she called the mafia her family as a joke, something so small but so luminous all the same.

Followed by a dropping pit in her stomach carried to the depths by the harsh force of gravity itself.

"To be honest I'm not sure where we are," there's too much honesty in her words when Quinn says this as Eriko, as a girl admitting to a fault in her ambition for love "sometimes I'm not sure where I am with myself either…" does a socialite feel alone when everyone is around her, there for her, at every corner of the room from every allegiance ever? Can wealth really not bandage any wounds ripped open by her own doubts?

"I need a life outside of him or else I might short wire but this just isn't enough." Quinn feels the false waterworks ready to order the canal doors open. She'll shed a tear, say woe is me and some crack about how they never fuck, and then Mai will buy her an exorbitantly priced watch and kiss her on the cheek goodnight. She's lying. She doesn't feel these things and she needs the time to remind herself that this is all fake, that her thoughts are all lies, always someone else's and not her own.

"Is Dazai enough?"

It's a loaded question, yet Quinn finally smiles into her cup with her answer sure of her own autonomous thought.

"Dazai is a good friend. _I don't know how I would have made it this far without him_."

* * *

 _Made it without him? That's funny. Pathetic too, but just… So funny of you to think that._

* * *

Theres no telling if sepia is applied to black but she feels the memory at the top of her skin, the last thing she remembers feeling before being cast in this sick darkness of another's conscious. Theres whispers, words, screams and sounds that are so close but seem so far in the darkness. It's only when the distinct symphony of raining gunfire fills her ears that she realizes she's shaking, arms cradling her body as she rocks in the darkness.

One eye opens. It's against the rules but she needs to see, and the worn holes between the floorboards above her give away so little. Everyone is still clad in black, and everyone is groomed to the same perfection.

"Where's the daughter?" the voice is young, but its presence nonetheless sends a shiver down her already shaking spine as she recoils to the corner.

The scene becomes choppy, but the nonlinear movement doesn't seem unnatural.

 _"Mama why am I—,"_  
 _"Just stay still and you'll be safe."_  
 _"If it's safe then why aren't you and dad coming with me?"_

The woman she looks at gives her a sad smile, hand reaching to smooth down her hair giving her a glance at the Japanese characters darkly etched into the skin at her wrist.

Like a glitch she's met with the sudden sight of the same wrist on the floor above her, shadows nearly hiding the tattoo yet defining the skin stained with blood.

Blood red eyes suddenly fill her vision. They're staring at her, unblinking, unmoving, their host motionless.

She feels her heart quicken; the scene cuts.

"How's business, Mr. Masamoto?" the same eyes are hidden beneath waves of brown hair, their owner short in stature and seemingly young. She's confused. Why did they hide her for this boy? He couldn't be a year or so older than her yet her parents are nervous, her father's voice wavering and her mother remaining silent behind him.

"Not so bad that the boss should send his prodigy for a visit, huh Dazai?"

The boy grins.

She sees her fathers head on the floor away from her, grey hair now red at their ends from the pool he lies in.

Dazai pushes the bodies aside and reaches for the floorboard that's meant to hide her from the world. When he pulls back, light cascades down enough to make her wince.

"Who put you down there?" she hears his voice but it's not boyish at all. He sounds like a man, a demon even, the order crisp and demanding an answer.

She says nothing. In her peripheral lay her parents bodies, tossed, flipped on their side like dolls when you're done with them.

"Did your parents try and hide you?" his head tilts with this one, curious, childish, menacing. Her mouth quivers but nothing comes out.

"Would you like to see them again, Juno?" he's kneeling now and his voice is soft, genuine, and for a second she wonders if this is all one bad dream he'll save her from.

Slowly she nods, a small affirmative hum coming from her throat as she tries to focus on the boy she's hoping to be her savior.

The gesture makes him smile. He holds out his hand for bus subordinates to see, and as though it appeared though space a gun is in his hand.

Aimed at her, inches from her skull.

Juno doesn't have time to scream before his finger presses into the trigger sending a bullet between her watering eyes, the sound too slow for her to hear with the last operating thrum of her ears, and the pain too instant in its collision with death for her to register as more than a headache.

* * *

Quinn opens her eyes enough that she felt they may roll out of her head suddenly reminiscing a sound so close to her ears that she should not hear; the bullets departing sound makes her scream enough for her hands to pull off the covers and step out of the bed. She can't feel her feet, she can't really see, but she can hear the sound of her soon to be hoarse voice as her cries bounce off of every wall. Her legs somehow carry her out of her room, but as she reaches the hallway they stop, she collapses, and with tears streaming down her face she hunches over the ground like a dog on all fours sobbing at the browning tiled floor.

She had dreams before, these memories that would leave her nostalgic for the same feelings Juno had, but never did she feel the crush of her skull at the entrance of a bullet and the pure fear that reverberated through her child body in shaking limbs. Never did she wake up this soon and this disturbed by something that seemed so fleeting, or false, and never did she vividly remember the horrific picture brought to life by the technicolor and sounds of the human brain. From the final cries of her parents to the glowing red of Dazai's eyes, Quinn shakes at every piece of the incomplete memory and almost falls face first onto the floor, arms unable to hold her up anymore.

Soon every limb gives out, and her eyes dry up, and her sounds of her voice is gone and replaces with slow breaths. If the movement wasn't automated she wouldn't know how to and would have suffocated to death right there on the hallway floor, her head throbbing in pain and fear, thoughts racing to the point where they collected together in a rubber band ball that racked around her head only giving her more to scream at.

But she can't scream anymore, and she can't cry anymore, but most of all she can't go back to sleep.

* * *

 ** _A/N AHEAD_**

oh boy did this take long.

for those of you who follow me on instagram and a03 you know i hit a rough bump with this fic and in order to keep writing for bsd i started a reader ficlet tumblr. honestly it's helped me a lot between situating ideas that would and would not work, working on characterization, and maximizing my exposure to chuuya fan art. check it out and make some requests if you want, the account user is prodicalmenace and i'll try and link it in my profile!

in light of such i realized that in order to complete this properly i need to cut out the sakurai subplot, but because i love the thick (sexual) tension that gave quinn and chuuya and what it does for her character i may continue that arc on ao3 at a later date. i'm sorry for taking up that time in the last chapter, but it's not a complete loss because this power family is definitely important to the puzzle of junos past.

anyway, fall is among us as is the weight of education, so stay warm, stay safe, and stay sassy  
—jackie.


	17. Quinn Solves a Murder Polt!

A bug crosses the floor along the grain of the wood, but at a large seam it stops, waits, and peeks inside to see what else is living beneath the house before continuing to cross into the opposite walls moldings.

When the insect seems to come too close to her body her hand twitches, fingers slowly crumbling into the palm of her hand to form a fist. Quinn is suddenly aware of the rise and fall of her chest, and the sweat that counters the cold wood floor she's still laying on, yet she's sure she hasn't blinked at all.

With an inhale she lets her heavy eyelids drop, but when they do she's met with the image of a gun at her forehead and the grin that pulled the trigger.

* * *

A real, genuine ringtone brings a fist to his night table only an inch away from the phone that sings, and when he finally grabs it his grip is enough to dent the metal.

"What is it?"  
 _"DID YOU KILL HER?"_

Chuuya feels his sheets fall around him as he sits up in bed, a hand smacking his forehead while tension builds in his jaw. Mai Sakurai was not a call he had to take.

"You need to be more specific."  
 _"Of course I do, underworld scum,"  
_ "You flatter me."

 _"Your girlfriend. I haven't seen her for almost two weeks, and considering she thrives off of pleasing you the only reason I can see her disappearing for is an unfortunate demise,"_ Mai hisses on the other side of the phone and he wonders how Quinn can deal with her on a regular basis, especially working to keep her at bay from her true involvement with the mafia. Chuuya, of course, could only play dumb to her jokes for so long. When she turned out to actually have a brain what was he supposed to do? An executive is a hard role to ignore.

"I'm sure she can answer the question better than I can." it's a statement far too true as he turns a yawn into a sharp inhale before checking the date on his phone to realize he also hasn't seen Quinn for a while.

He tries to ignore how sick it makes him feel that a third party had to tell him his partner is off the rocks.

 _"Well she's not, and I find it oh-too-coincidental this is happening after that bump in with the detective agency guy."_

His eyes stare straight ahead.

"Excuse me?"  
Mai is quiet for once, but too soon he hears the squeak of her voice in an all too proud laugh.

 _"You know, you're both so guilty that it makes you compatible."_ her words are cryptic, and they shouldn't apply to anyone but him, but the sudden itch he feels biting at his skin gives the Sakurai far too much power on the other side of the phone line.

"Don't call this number again." he commands, and when he hangs up the edges of the phone reveal vicious indents where his hand once was.

Not unlike the wood at Quinn's door that threatens to splinter under his later gloved knuckles, mouth closed though jaw uncomfortably clenched as he waits for an answer.

There is none, and after the first minute he looks around at the mail piling at the corner of her door; generated university letters and strange catalogs, all forwarded from a dummy address, were stacked into a proper rectangle that only shows the wear of weather in the corners of its pages. By the second knock they're all under his arm as a means to clean up the already crowded porch and serve as a viable alibi for being there. He only considers the necessary details at the third knock when the motion is softer, and the familiar sensation of worry makes him take a deep breath.

He jiggles the door handle to be sure there's no forced lock for entry on the other side. At the slight right, it pushes open.

Chuuya looks between the concrete steps he stands on and the cheap wood at the divide of the door. Quietly, he steps in.

Like he's blocked by another doorway, Chuuya remains at the entrance of the hallway, eyes taking in the darkness save for a large window in the other room that makes every flying particle of dust visible. When he places the mail by his feet and takes off his shoes he notices how it also covers the floor, and the sheer two weeks Mai was concerned about suddenly spirals into more at the sheer state of emptiness—but when he continues through the rest of the apartment he finds that the home itself is unnervingly empty as though it was still waiting to be lived in, yet there's been over a year of life.

Soon he finds himself stopped at the plain white wood of the bedroom door; through the open crack he can see the sleeping figure inside rolled in the blanket facing the opposite side of the room.

She's far too still, and Chuuya wonders if she's buying time to make him go away.

"Have you been sleeping this entire time?" he pushes the door open wider, and the quiet croak makes her shift a bit in her sheets despite not turning around.

"Thinking, mostly," Quinn's voice comes after a few seconds of silence, and it's tinged with a hoarse tone that he could only place to screams.

"Thinking…" he ghosts the term while he leans into the doorway, eyes scanning the rest of the room. If it weren't for the bed he would have thought it just as empty as everywhere else. "Alright, what's been on your mind for two weeks?"

"Eleven days."  
"And counting it seems."

He has a teasing grin that she can't see, yet Quinn reaches and pulls the covers over her face.

"Why are you here?" her words are muffled and barely pass through the barrier of the blanket, so he makes his way across the room to kneel at her bedside. When he does he finds her phone on the night table lighting up with an unknown number but not making a sound. Another of the many missed calls from Mai, he assumes, or even himself.

"Hows Juno's head treating you?" answering a question with a question, a clear deflective tactic that neither of them want to validate.

"Just peachy."  
"Oh? Then why have you been playing hermit? You can think on the job, you know."

"Gosh, Chuuya!" with a dramatic groan she flings the blanket off of herself finally sitting eye level with the executive at the edge of her mattress. "Can't I just have eleven bad days!"

"Sequentially?" she groans again with his word and drops her head to his one raised knee, hair like experimental cotton-candy falling off the edges of his pants. In a bad reflex he beings his gloved hand tp rest at the base of her neck, a black thumb delicately stroking pastel strands of hair along her nerve; her own arms follow a bad reflex as they come to wrap around his waist, hands reaching through his jacket to fold themselves against the ends of his shirt.

Chuuya cares too much. He always has. When people would call him weak it never had anything to do with his strength, ability, tactfulness or grit, but his emotions. He was hardwired for anger with the burning flames of an ethereal being coursing through his body; he was raised too empathetic with other children whose survival was constantly in question; he devotes himself to other people, a man loyal to his city, his organization, its people, its boss.

His partners.

Chuuya stops his thumb when it comes back to the rest of his hand, the hand that is currently gently curled at the base of Quinn's neck nestled beneath short layers of hair the color of a different candy, one much sweeter than chocolate.

* * *

Quinn doesn't care much for the cotton-candy strands that fly in her face as she makes her way into tower three, heels clanking off the pavement as a means of saying "make way" to those that are around her. She doesn't care much for those people either, or the way her toes are pinched in the shoes; all this distaste for her current situation seeps into her expression like a terminal resting bitch face warding off even the nicest of agents as she makes her way to a steel door in the darkened corner of the buildings lobby floor.

Quickly she fishes out a black ID card with no markings other than a series of characters embossed on its front. Her thumb traces each computer generated stroke before swiping it against the necessary panel, visualizing what they read; _executive, Nakahara_.

The steel door drops into the floor and Quinn steps inside.

Thinking wasn't all she was doing for the past eleven days, thirteen hours and fifty three minutes. Planning would have been a better choice of words. From the poor comfort of her mattress she spent days going over the dream Juno gave her, the one that was obnoxiously clear, even if not concise, in comparison to the threads she would give her before. With Nichi there were crumbs, like she was holding something back, but with Dazai there was a searing anger—there was intent, and Quinn couldn't tell if she was more upset about the grainy contents of her nightmare or that Juno was a horrible communicator.

She needed facts, and in an organization that prided itself in its darkness, getting them cued up on her laptop in the comfort of her home was not possible. As far as the easily attainable records knew, Juno didn't exist outside of Quinn's new existence, and while that was oddly comforting it still left a black hole where a real person once was. Personnel files were only available on those active, and employees portals were just as updated and bland, which left the barracks of the paper trail the Port Mafia refuses to have: the records room.

Whose records are inaccessible to those below the outranking underboss status.

Chuuya, unfortunately, ended up as collateral damage in this ploy, a patsy for the smallest of crimes to which she had no idea how to answer to if she got caught. As there's no cctv-like security system set for the records level of the third tower, it would be easy for her to lie should anyone with true authority ask if she was there while also being easy to assume that Chuuya was just looking into... Things. He worked his way to executive in order to find information on his past, whose to say he was actually finished.

Her shoes clank against the sterile steel floors, and her eyes follow the sound as it bounces off of the walls of the hall like a ping pong ball. There's nothing in this tunnel other than herself, her dormant alter ego, and her thoughts—her own poor memories playing back as she finds the journey into the den to be painfully longer than she would have liked.

 _"Why was your door unlocked?"_ Chuuya asked her, appeased by her bland answer of needing fresh air. _"Why didn't you call anyone?"_ he followed up and she said she needed to be alone.

 _"Why?"_ he was like a child in his need for answers and clarification on top of that. It was obnoxious enough to make her laugh, a genuinely sick sound that left her with her hands pulling the hair at her scalp as she stared at his torso wondering when he would notice it wasn't there, wondering if one wrong move would expose the black card amidst her white sheets, wondering what it was she actually felt that kept her in bed this long.

 _"Because I wasn't sure I was me."_

In that way she knew Chuuya would understand, Chuuya would sympathize, and perhaps Chuuya would keep her secret for her if anything happened. Quinn needed to believe she could count on him at this point despite everything she's done, and though she knew she could in an almost unconditional way she just wasn't sure. After all, she found herself lied to by the liar.

The muscles at her jaw tighten as her teeth begin to grate against themselves; she nearly stops in her tracks steps away from the bright arch holding moldy boxes of paper files on the other side. She wants to call herself a fool but she cant, not until she knows the full story.

Hence the hours she spends searching through unalphabetized records, pinches from paper cuts on her thumbs subsiding before her blood could get anywhere incriminating, like the child photographs of the men that guard the bosses door or stand too long at the water cooler.

Or the picture of an infant Masamoto Juno held in the arms of her mother clipped to the corner of a manila folder.

Quinn swallows the lump in her throat that makes her want to puke and turns the page; Juno is ten and she glows with two pink braids framing her face as her parents frame her body behind her. In the opposite page theres a breakdown of her vitals with a small summary of her involvement in her family business, of the temper tantrums she throws at school and a fight she got in with a local boy. Theres a scribble at the bottom of this typed page in rushed japanese that she can't completely read, or rather can't completely pronounce. The words come out like a bad fraternity name except for the final word: yume, dreams.

Her thumb traces over the smile in the picture before flicking to the next page.

And theres nothing there.

* * *

Gunfire sings a horrific melody his lungs could give out to, and with a strong exhale smoke is added to the air. You wouldn't be able to place it, nor him with the sheer sounds of his breath, and Hirotsu finds a tranquil appreciation in the anonymity.

It's all over with a sigh.

"You're still not very good at sneaking up on people."

"I'll tell Kouyou to add it to my list of things to work on." he hears the way the young Machada is mocking the executive in her voice but he makes no move to negate in any reply, only a flick of his arm to drop the ashes at the end of his cigarette.

"Do you wish to speak with the dead?" the groans of the maimed now start their own symphony as feet shuffle around to deal the final blows. He takes another drag of his cigarette.

"I get enough of that keeping me up at night, I'm here to speak _of_ the dead."

There's an unprecedented edge to her voice that Hirotsu has only heard rumors of, and a strength to her posture that he takes in with one eye before looking back to the cracks in the alley way. Fortune has favored many in the mafia, but in all his time he can't help but admit that it's favored her the most with all the opportunity she's stepped into without spilling a drop of blood. From being the bosses temporary plaything to an executives doll to dress, she's climbed the tower floors faster than most. But there was more to her than switching between the hands of higher ups and her involvement; there was more that he could see in the way her eyes casually darted around every exit while her body was lax yet in perfect stance to attack when necessary. There was a subtle kickstart to her reflexes that were like for like for the mafia regimen, a certain power she's obtained that did in fact make it just that much easier for her to sneak up on him.

If he were more involved with this growth, Hirotsu would dare to say he was proud, but her obsession with the Masamoto puzzle consistently ruins any pride anyone dares to have. As it clouds her concerns with her identity, it ultimately clouds the completion of any growth, and the strength of her upset masked by a cocky facade is a jumble of Juno's personality and Quinn's lived promotion.

"I am not the records, you know."  
"I do know that." her curt reply is paired with an outstretched arm holding a folded triangle at her fingertips, a photograph stashed in her pockets he realizes when taking it from her hands, dust delicately staining his white gloves.

A child Masamoto surrounded by adults recognizable as her parents; draping over her shoulders are two braids framing a wide eyed smile frowned upon for census photos—but a child just cant help themselves.

"Executives and up are the only ones who have access to truly paper things." he muses, though Quinn doesn't oblige him with an answer, and answers is what she should already have if she's showing him such illicitly happy images.

"I don't know much of Juno" he says  
"You've been here longer than anyone, of course you do, even if it's just whispers."

"What whispers are you looking for?" he asks.

She finally says "The whisper of her death, and how it was caused by the mafias own up and coming demon prodigy."

Hirotsu signs; Quinn always held the potential to be a beacon for trouble.

"Juno wasn't just some casualty to sporadic gunfire," she immediately argues when the silence isn't enough, "she was a casualty of intent. Clearly Mori wanted her to be killed, and her parents too," her words fall into the air with the rising smoke from Historu's dead cigarette and the clearing gunfire.

He can't tell if he should be sick by her insinuations of his boss or the new corpses that lay behind him, though neither have managed to bother him before.

"Hirotsu, _please_ ," she says in that innocent voice, the need that comes with her final word reminds him of her voice a year ago, the voice that was untouched from the chaos that effortlessly entered her veins.

He quickly folds the picture with his thumb and tosses it to the ground not wanting it in his presence longer than necessary, the edges already beginning to stain and fold in on themselves from the wet pavement.

"They were sympathizers," the word should hold poison but instead he finds only indifference "the Masamotos maintained a ring to relieve Mori of his seat as the boss. They wanted the mafia to return to the chaos it was before, because it was a chaos the previous boss dictated them to live in. Mori only acted as he should have."

He waits for the silence to be short lived, for her to say something, for her to accept the facts given, but no words come from her mouth.

It's not what she asked. It wasn't the answer Quinn wanted.

"But she survived," Quinn's voice wavers with a required anger, something new to the bite of words before.

"Yes."

"And Dazai was the one sent to pull the trigger?"

" _Always_."

* * *

Hums fill his throat as nimble fingers work on the task at hand. Gently each digit glides to fold perfect creases in a paper at his desk, body lax and mind clear despite the piercing silence that surrounds him. Dazai has had a good day, a day filled with absolutely nothing. Life at the agency was slow the past few days and he decided that he was into it and enjoyed the peace after so much chaos. Granted, Kunikida did smack him around a few times and he did experiment with the more deadly extremes of auto erotica asphyxiation, but it was good enough to get the blood flowing so he could sit for the next six hours rounding past the agencies official closing mark.

A rush of footsteps threaten to disturb the peace as the door to the office swings open, red hair flying past Dazai's desk and rummaging through a drawer with an apology for his hurried return. Dazai politely waves at Tanazaki slowly spinning in his chair and completely unbothered by the interruption until the boy stops short of leaving the door.

"Oh, by the way, I think I saw Quinn heading to your apartment,"

Dazai's foot stops its swaying motion, and the rest of his calm exterior drops for a second. She never just dropped by his home unannounced. She would always show up at the agency first, make it seem like she wasn't even after his company, and by the end of the night he would lead her to trip on her own feet in the grasslands.

With a small laugh, Dazai smiles. "She just can't stay away," he tells Tanazaki in an aloof fashion that has his physical expressions contrasting the on-edge feeling that seeped into every fiber of his body.

When he finally leaves, Dazai sits still in the darkness, his brain running through scenarios as his eyes stare blankly at the lowly lit floors. The crane he worked so hard to form with his fingertips suddenly crushed between his thumbs as he flicks the mound of paper away from him.

 _She's been caught_ , he considers, found out as a result of poor lies that Mai Sakurai could see through and share like a new global phenomenon. She's let her rouse take over her life, she had poor judgement, she came to a conclusion with her digging and—.

She found him out.

 _Yikes_.

* * *

Only a crack of the door is open and Dazai finds himself hit by two sudden senses: the repeated sounds of what seemed like a slamming fist and the smell of fresh food the home significantly lacked. Despite the comfort of the smell he steadily stepped further into the room until he reached the kitchen where all the sounds were at their source.

With a steady flick of her wrist, Quinn repeatedly smacks a literal hammer against what seemed to be some kind of meat—chicken perhaps. The act was completely domestic but he was vividly picturing flesh being beaten in with blunt objects until the skin gave way like a levee for blood.

With every thwack the meat would grow tender and flatten against the surface, but there was no signs of success in her expression. Her stare was dead against the killed meat, strands of hair that fell from a poor knot behind her head sticking to her skin from the sheer effort of it all. _What did that poor carcass do to her?_

She pulls the hammer back, but before it could make another hit he swiftly moves to grab the top from behind her keeping her still in her kitchen attack stance.

"Looks to me like a job well done,"

She twitches ever so slightly before her eyes meet his in a piercing stare that turned the iris blacker than he's ever seen in her profile. Maybe it was just a blink, but his body is on edge again from the sight of sudden difference in her eyes before she looks away. It could have been pure surprise or it could have been pure malice; Dazai is uncomfortable with the fact that he can't be sure.

"If you like chewing rubber, I guess." she mumbles, she grunts, she puffs in her exhales and lets go of the hammer so he can drop it with a loud thunk into the sink behind her. There are so many signs of struggle in the way she moves now, so many telling details that tell him to get her the fuck out of his own house, but he just watches her as she seasons the meat that should be bruised, nimble fingers working everything into the flesh with an intense focus.

"You're making me dinner?" he questions, now looking to the stove where a pot of rice sits in his own steam like a body in a sauna. Behind him he hears the swish of a knife cooly cutting the air after being unearthed from the drawer; a quick glance and he sees Quinn hurriedly slicing through the chicken.

"I'm making you dinner." she says with a slice of the knife hard enough to dent his cheap cutting board. He opens the pot to pick out a few grains with his fingers and hums as a response.

"What's the occasion?" Dazai reaches for more, the lid dangling from the fingertips of his other hand. Quinn laughs, and it's a dangerous cackle with bass reminiscent of incredibly delayed thunder.

"Where do I start?"  
"The beginning is always good."  
"Well, it begins with you murdering a twelve year old girl."

The rice goes sour in his mouth. Quinn is now wiping off the poultry goo on the front of her already stained shirt.

"That doesn't seem very celebratory." Dazai narrows an eye as he watches her fabric covered fingers slowly trace the blade.

"It wasn't meant to be a celebration." her eyes are far too interested in the knife when she takes it out of her shirt and inspects the sharper ends in the light. He makes a point of clutching the lid in his hand tighter and holding it at the level of his chest like a makeshift shield. _"It's your last supper."_

He opens his mouth to say how ironic her biblical reference is in attempt to make time but it doesn't come out when the poignant swish of a blade through air fills the room instead. The knife she was so consumed with now thrown to the wall by Dazai's head, and if it weren't for his quick shift to the right it would have severely damaged his skull.

More tragically, his elbow tipped the rice pot onto the ground. The chances of dinner for him were slimmer than ever.

"That wasn't very nice, I wasn't ready yet," he pants between words as he slides to the opposite end of the small kitchen when Quinn seems to follow, hand dipping into the sink to grab the hammer he originally thought was her only choice of weapon.

"I'm so sorry, do you need a second to get yourself together?" she stands straight as she coos, head tilted to the side and arms lax like the whole threatening aura that caused her violent outburst was past her.

"Yeah that would actually be great—,"  
"Fuck you!" her yell is like a battle cry as she charges towards him with a swing, and and the pot lid that was his means of defense is thwacked out of his hand with so much force he feels his hands burning as his skin prepares to display red welts.

"This all seems like very misplaced rage—,"  
"Seven years ago Mori noticed an increase in sympathizers for the old boss. The _child_ responsible for the army was tasked with taking them all out."  
"That child was following very strict orders similar to yourself, all the time."

"Would you just let me finish!" with another scream she lunges towards him but Dazai still manages to slide out if harms way like the greasy bastard he is. Instead of coming into contact with his skull as she intended Quinn has herself stuck between the cheap linoleum of his kitchen cabinets, she huffs again, angry, and from afar Dazai realizes how little of a plan she actually had without attempting for an upper hand. There's an eerie calm that begins to settle in him knowing he'll likely make it out of tonight unscathed, and he considers it catastrophically uncharacteristic.

"You should really get to the point, the villains always loose when they take their time with their fancy speeches."

Her head seems to spin all the way around her neck to find him, pupils dilated, shoulders rising so fast her heart rate picks up by ten fold. "I'm the _villain_?" she snorts, and her hands let go of the hammer bringing his cabinets to now completely fall off the wall. "Since when were you so black and white about things, Dazai?"

She slowly heads towards him but he doesn't move. He decides against speaking, too, when the skin on her fists fall whiter than her already pale complexion, and with nothing left to physically use as a shield he gently raises his hands in front of him as if they alone will give her the will to stop.

The exact opposite unfolds in Quinn's head at the sight of his fingers nearly beckoning her, hands urging her close because they know they can stop her in closed quarters. The move alone is like he's raising the gun all over again, because God knows where she goes when his skin finally touches hers. That's what she's avoided all this time after all, the possibility of the void and the suffocation of being pulled from existence from the brush of hands.

Quinn swallows. She's shaking as she finally stops her steps, but in her lack of movement Dazai seems to believe he has clearance to then move towards her, and in a flash her hands grab the shitty kitchen towel tucked into her pants to thwack it at his face.

Naturally, he dodges the juvenile attack, though only to end up close enough for the towel to wrap around his wrist in a tight knot.

When Dazai's pupils dilate at the slight trap, Quinn refrains from letting the edges of her mouth curl into a maniacal grin as she uses all the force she can muster to flip his body to the floor. Something snaps at the collision with the ground, and before she could consider a final blow she is brought down with him by a tug of the towel.

As it collides with the ground, Quinn feel's her jaw press into her top row of teeth cracking the shallow bones. Her hand still wrapped around the cheap fabric able to snatch it when Dazai lets go—but she doesn't rush to her feet. She waits, and the loose teeth she spits out with blood are soon replaced like a drill in her gums, and her hanging jaw soon reassembles itself to bite on her tongue.

Blood still seeps into her mouth as she watches Dazai reach a kneel, but she swallows the taste. It's delicious, it's powerful, it leaves her insatiable even as she lays on the floor watching him stand, watching him step forward, watching him actualize an upper hand.

"You let Juno watch as you _slaughtered_ her parents." the words spit like poison as the red stains at her lips begin to dry out. When Dazai's feet take up her eye sight he musters a laugh.

"To be fair I didn't know she was watching."

"Yes, you did," she spits again, blood staining the bottoms of his pants and dripping to his shoes. "You saw the eyes in the floorboards the moment you stepped inside. You _smiled_ at her the moment you realized she was tucked away, like it was your Christmas."

If Quinn was paying attention to the twitch of his mouth she would have noticed the frown, she would have assumed his disappointment in her interpretation of him after all this time, but she can't give a fuck about him and his fictional expertise when its her reality he's shaken in that intentionally malicious way—so she trips him with a pull at the hem of his pants, legs crawling her way up his body to pull his arms over his head at a lose bandage. Her thumb barely centimeters away from his skin as she watches his stoic expression staring through her head.

She's too close, even as she inches her head towards his in some ridiculous display of power. Tendrils crawl across her skin, and she doesn't want to consider they could be from fear.

"Are you done now?" his breath smells giving the words a horrifying toxin, and all the flipping and tipping makes her want to throw up.

"I want you to tell me—,"  
"Why? You know why, you know the whole story,"  
"I want you to tell me why you waited for me to find out!" She yells and the movement pulls too hard at the dried skin of her lips that crack to let out drops of blood, and with gravity they fall onto the surface beneath her, under Dazai's eye and down his cheek in the pathway of a tear.

Dazai closes his eyes, and a painful relief comes across his face while his body is lax.

She could suffocate him now, she could hold him to the floor and wait for him to stay like a corpse forever. She could keep his cadaver, she could make it her prize, she could hold it up to the mirror and tell Juno to fuck off for good now.

But she lets him breathe, and lets him inhale slowly with her still against her chest only to let the wind from his nose brush past her cheek. The power that kept her there gone, and with the next breath she rolls herself to lay at his side, to breathe at his pace, and to lay with her body lax as a painful relief slowly washes itself through her body.

"Dazai..." she's not sure if she's actually breathing but she can feel her chest rise and fall, and can hear the air brush out of her nose in what must be a slow exhale.

"Quinn." his voice is all too comfortable amidst the pain she put him through, and for a split second she feels bad for making him suffer in his own home.

The second doesn't last.

"If I ever see you again, I will shoot you." her statement is definitive, less of a warning and more of a decision that sets this moment on the floor as a fluke, an emotional burst that is still tinged with doubt until she willed it away.

She can hear movement beside her, and quickly she turns her head to see Dazai's laying body turn on his side like the leaning is so casual with the blood stained tear threatening to stain the white lines in his dress shirt with the quietest "plop", yet stagnant on his pale skin.

"I would expect nothing less."

* * *

Quinn leaves when all the lights in the complex are off, with the sounds of the city at bay making the creaking close of Dazai's door echo across the street. Her hair is tossed over her shoulder with no attempt to mask the mess of her days old clothes, eyes in a daze as she makes it down the winding steps and to the street, waiting at the stoplight.

When she looks into the empty road, Chuuya is almost afraid she placed his bike in the sea of darkness ahead with him mounted and watching for her every move, but her eyes are empty and she blinks once, turns her head, and walks away as though she has done nothing wrong.

* * *

 _ **A/N AHEAD**_

remember when i said "yeah i'll totally finish this by the years end"? well like most things i say regarding timelines, it was an elaborate hoax that even i myself was fooled by. its chill though, we're still having a good time, right?

i wanna give a huge thanks to those who have followed me on the journey of writing this and the newcomers who see potential. i always believe in writing for yourself (as this is obviously evidence for in every possible way) but knowing that someone else loves my on fire garbage can too… damn, thats powerful stuff. as jane krakowski said, you're the real stars.

a big emphasis on staying safe right now. hygiene, of course, is key, and if you are locally prohibited from going out please please don't fight them on it. we're all stuck but we're stuck together so feel free to PM me, DM me, whatever communication you can get your hands on and wanna complain, gush, or theorize through. go right ahead and i'll do the same back! an example of things to discuss: i've started watching rwby and am realizing that quinn and chuuya are color coordinated with neo and roman and i feel both encouraged and threatened! thanks!

so as always, stay warm, stay safe (!theres no such thing as too many exclamation points!not kidding none can do justice please take care of yourselves!), and stay sassy old sport—jackie.


	18. SPECIAL: Quinn Birthday

_**yes we have another chuuya special, except this time it's a finished version of a reactionary piece i've been working on for quinns own birthday characterization. to read or not to read, but i'll take this time to thank everyone whose followed, faved, and reviewed as always. i, too, am looking forward to the update.**_

* * *

Her fingers tap restlessly against the top of her blanket, eyes closed as she adjusts her shoulders in bed. She should be falling asleep any minute now and getting back to the real world where she has a paper due in three days that she neglected to start even conceptually. Quinn opens her eyes and looks back at the clock: 11:57.

She pulls the blanket over her head hoping the darkness would consume her and encourage her mind to fall black as well, but instead she focused on the scent of the fabric softener that was all too close to her nose. She brings the blanket down and looks at the clock again: 11:59.

At this point, she waits, and watches as the digital colons flicker with every passing second. _Thirty one, thirty two, thirty three_ , it's like time actually slows down now despite her keeping track of the increments, until finally the clock changes.

It's midnight, a whole new day from the last. Her birthday.

* * *

Quinn decided against falling asleep and instead cleaned every inch of the apartment until the sun rose high enough that it was okay for her to get dressed and head for work. Being that it was so early, she walked to the towers. It wasn't that bad considering the weather was beautiful and the silence of the streets gave her an ease she hadn't had for a long time, and when she got to her office her floor was empty. She was the only one there, able to get an immediate inventory on all the numbers for the day and a good start for work.

She also had the opportunity to go completely berserk. Which was great, because she did.

Though she calmly filled up her coffee mug, grabbed all the necessary papers, and settled herself into her desk without anyone interjecting the process, looking at the Yokohama cityscape didn't fill her with the same peace it did every other day. This had a lot to do with the face in the window she saw, the reflection she tried so hard not to look at all morning from the bathroom mirror to the glistening shine of a car door.

 _How many times was she going to go through this?_

* * *

"Hi, I need maintenance in my office please…A broken window."

When they asked her how it was she broke through bullet proof glass she hung up the phone. They got the order, that's all that mattered.

In the still early morning chill, Quinn takes a sip of her coffee, staring out of the hole in the window the size of her face. She sits on top of her overturned filing cabinet now at the center of the room where her desk was, the desk now in pieces against the wall to her right. Papers fly everywhere around her feet but they stick to the offices carpet. Her chair is gone.

Everything is so much clearer without the glass, and taking one final sip from her mug she finally felt the peace of the city again with no one to mock her.

* * *

Quinn barred anyone from entering her office when she announced she would leave early for the day. She claimed there were unsafe working conditions created by some kind of gas leak and for them to only let maintenance in when they came up. She apologized for the damage of files but did hand them back to the necessary people. Some were ripped, wrinkled, others had imprints from the soles of her shoes. No one asked questions. She made it to the elevator and no one who got on it spoke to her. She made it to the lobby and no one even gave her a glance. It was the type of invisibility that once terrified her, but how it felt like a hug on Christmas.

She was on the street ready to cross the main road when that hug was ripped from her arms.

" _Oi!_ " she hears the yell behind her but doesn't turn around, still watching the light at the crosswalk, waiting for the final signs that tell her she can go. The sound is repeated but louder, and she realizes the voice is now right behind her.

"Where are you going?" Chuuya asks in a harsh tone, clearly stressed, or maybe just annoyed since he always felt he had to be the one to play babysitter to her. She doesn't turn or validate his presence really, aside from the quiet mutter of the word "home".

"Are you walking?"  
"It's a beautiful day."  
"They said you didn't take the car this morning."  
"It's a beautiful day."

The light changes, and without another word she walks ahead. It's rude, she knows, and it will only get her some kind of lecture (or worse) later, but standing there waiting for him to make conversation was not a better alternative either. Maybe the _real_ better alternative was not breaking her window, or her office furniture, or even going in at all today.

Quinn was coming to terms with all the bad choices she made when she noticed a shadow beside her; Chuuya, only three inches taller than her, blocked any sunlight as he crossed with her to her right. When they make it across the street she stops in her tracks, and it takes him a bit for him to look back and stop too.

"What are you doing?" her eyes narrow, almost twitch like she's the one who was stressed, annoyed that he always felt the need to play babysitter to her.

"I'm going in this direction too." his face is innocent, and she pictures a glowing halo above his head to confirm. "What, you think I'm following you?" the halo is gone while the ends of his lips curl into a smirk. Any other day Quinn would have gone red at the sight alone, said some flustered set of words and walked right in front of traffic, but now she just blinks.

"Yes." she's terse. She doesn't move from her spot, and she wonders how long she'll have to wait for the light to change so she could go back to the other side of the street. Like he knows she's weighing the option, his smile drops, and he shoves his hands into his pockets with a frown.

"There's a convenience store near your apartment, I need a few things."  
"From a convenience store?"  
"It's _convenient_."

They stand on their opposite ends of the sidewalk for a few seconds, silent save for the rushing of cars in the street. It's like a stare off, but something about his again irritated tone is more comforting than his earlier teasing one, and with a huff she walks past him. "Don't walk too close to me." she directs. He disobeys, and again he blocks the sun now on her left side.

It's silent most of the way, save for the sounds of people yelling at each other between houses or businesses of all lewd kinds booming. He doesn't ask her any questions again and neither does she, even as they pass the convenience store he supposedly needed a few things from. It's about two blocks from her apartment when they come upon a group of kids all playing in the street, yelling at cars when they come by and laughing amongst themselves when they leave. Seeing them makes Quinn stop her steps, and when he realizes she is no longer beside him Chuuya soon does the same, but like before they're at a distance, opposite ends of the sidewalk.

She's not sure if he's looking at her or the group of kids because she's too focused on the group herself. There's seven of them, and they can't be more than ten years old, all jumping and shoving and yelling a bit incoherently she can't make out all of the words but one—mafia.

It's a game they play, something like who will survive when the big bad mafia comes around; four of them were assigned to be in the mafia and the other three are the commoners, the "shit people" one of the kids seem to scream as they jump another to the ground and pretend to use a machine gun to keep him that way. They all laugh, though, acting like their guts are being spilled out, and even in their characters dying breath one kid cries out "tell my family I love them!" before dramatically sticking his tongue out with his eyes closed. He's dead for about two seconds before he gets up and insists it is his turn to be mafia now, telling his friend he doesn't want to be a loser again. They all begin to scream over each other about how thats not how the game is supposed to work, and it seems like they're about to fight each other for real before a woman yells a series of names down the block. They turn, a bit afraid they were caught, then all yell "coming!" as they rush down the street.

Quinn stares at the pavement where the one kid lied, tongue out, eyes closed, asking his killer to tell his family he loved them one last time.

"When did did you stop feeling like you were someone else's vessel?" the question, given the context, is random, and she's sure Chuuya wasn't happy with it or her connotations. When he didn't say anything, she quickly turned to him and continued speaking. "The hat," when she points to the fabric on his head he reaches to take it off "what made you realize you were a hat person and he—… He wasn't." she nearly swallows the last of her words back but she's made it too far.

It's silent again, and Chuuya still stands a couple feet from her staring into abyss of the hat. She suspects he's trying to keep himself composed, but his hands aren't exactly balled into fists the way they normally are when he's holding in anger. Actually, nothing about him is defensive, and that concerns her the most.

She opens her mouth to add something light to ease them out of the dead end she led them to and hopefully give her a straight shot home until he takes the few steps closer to her and puts the hat on her head. It's light, at first, until he taps the top to make sure it's snug around her hair. At this, she whispers a superlative and raises her arms to take the hat off and push him away, but her hands are soon caught in his. She holds her breath at the contact alone, but takes a sharp inhale as Chuuya takes off his gloves and puts them on her own hands.

The motion is slow to her when the first glove comes off and she sees his bare hand up close. Was this the first time? Maybe there were other instances she can't remember, which seems odd because thats something she would definitely file away for a rainy day.

When you first look at Chuuya's hands you know you're looking at a gem, something as precious as a diamond kept in a vault for a hundred years, and though she's imagined them both spotless and calloused, nothing prepares her for the velvet feel that was softer than the inside of his gloves. His long fingers weren't even manicured yet they were cleaner and glossier than Quinn's own. If he had scars, it was something that healed leaving a visible tint on his skin rather than a texture she could feel. His other hand was the same, but she couldn't take her eyes off the way his fingers would delicately wrap themselves around her wrists, or the way his thumbs would lightly press into her skin as he pulled the wrist of the glove closer to her own. If she was looking, she would have realized they were a bit baggy and tight at the palms; her own hand, though bigger in width, smaller where the fingers were concerned, and she wondered if he had them specially made for him rather than picking them up at a haberdashery.

"Who do you feel like?" Chuuya's voice is the last thing she would expect after her questions; it's soft, and reminiscent of the innocent tone she heard before even if she can't feel the glow of a halo behind him. With the question he lets go of her hands and pushes his back into his pockets, bare skin tucked away from the world.

For a while she merely blinks, looking between her miserably covered hands with the shadow casted from the hat now on her head. Seconds pass and she refrains from attempting to pull the gloves off her hands and toss back his precious hat. _Who does she_ _ **feel**_ _like?_

"I feel like you?" her voice is a question, lingering amongst the wind, her mind now away from her own and that of the student she hates to be as she assesses the situation. To no luck, though, does she understand it.

"But you don't look like me."  
"Chuuya, this is dumb—,"  
"You look a lot like you."

She takes the hat off and sighs, his efforts lost as she pushes it into his chest, but Chuuya doesn't take his hands out of his pockets to reach for it. "I look a lot like Juno." she lightly pushes him again, a silent ask for him to take his things and let her be, but he refuses to budge.

"Do you feel like Juno?"

There's a lump in her throat as she swallows, unable to look him in the eye.

 _That's a loaded question._ Juno obviously still exists, she keeps herself locked away for rainy days and troubled nights, only showing herself when she sees fit. So Quinn has to wait, feign control, wonder how much of the things in her head are actually her own and not misplaced daydreams or another. Quinn is really just a consciousness, a fleeting existence of a person who doesn't even belong in this universe. It's why takes in her ceiling with detail every night so she can sign if she wakes up to a change, it's why she's anticipated this day for months hoping it could be somewhere else yet still fearful of being plucked from a reality she's just become accustomed to, but most of all it's why she cant stand her slightest reflection, the reminder that none of this world is hers, a reminder that _she_ doesn't belong.

"I always knew my body was me, but everything inside…" Chuuya continues as though the existential gears in her head haven't started to move "It took a while to realize that was me too. The only thing I have left of… Of him… Is his power. But this," his hands finally come around her own gloved ones to drop his hat back on his head, and as he does she finally looks up at him again, his expression holding the smallest sense of price "this is all me."

She inhales, holding the breath in for a few seconds before dropping her forehead against the still gloved hands at her chest. Time goes by and he lets her stay there, hands coming around to slowly slip off the gloves and put them back over his own skin. When he does her hands reflexively come around his waist, and with the final tug on of his gloves he finds himself doing the same. As they stand in the embrace life around them goes on; cars pass on the street, children come back out to play, but they remain contained in their own moment of security.

"So," Chuuya eventually breaks the silence when he drops his chin at the top of her head "are you ready to talk?"

Quinn frowns against the fabric of his vest before pulling herself back and giving him a chance to see her furrowed eyebrows, hands still at his waist needing to tether herself to this world. "About what?"

 _"_ _About the chair you threw out of your office window this morning."_


End file.
